
'ONGRESS 


LIBRARY " 



UNITED STATEN OF AMERICA 
















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" Appletons’ 


New Handy- Volume Series. 


Misericordia. 


BY 

ETHEL LYNN LINTON. 





NEW YORK: 

D, APPLETON & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. 


Copyright by D. Appleton & Co., 1878. 



APPMTOl 

SEW 


VOIDEE 


SERIES. 





IISKIS. 


NliWIORE: 


APPLETONS’ 


mW lAIDT-TOLFIE SEE,! 




Brilliant Novelettes ; Romance, Adz/enture, Travel, Huznorj Historic, 
Literary, and Society Monographs. 


The later developments of literary taste with American readers 
indicate two things : first., a preference for compact and lucid out- 
lines of historic or literary periods, and for stories which, while 
within the compass of a single reading, shall have all the symmetry, 
the artistic treatment, the careful character-drawing, and the fresh- 
ness of incident, which mark the lengthier but scarcely more ambi- 
tious novel ; second, a demand for books in a form so convenient and 
handy that the volume may always be carried in the pocket, ready 
for use on the train, on the steamboat, in the horse-car, at moments 
snatched at twilight or bedtime, while sitting on the sea-shore or 
rambling in the woods — at all periods of rest or leisure, whether in 
town or country. 

In recognition of these preferences and needs, Appletons’ New 
Iandy-Yolume Series is projected. The books in this series are 
of a size convenient for the pocket, and yet large enough to admit 
of bold and handsome type in order that they may be perused with- 
out fatigue, with that sense of restfulness and pleasure which well- 
printed volumes alone confer. They will appear rapidly, in uniform 
style, at low prices, and will draw their material from American, 
English, and Continental sources, forming eventually a delightful li- 
brary, varied in character and fairly exhaustless in the refined enter- 
tainment it will afford. Fiction necessarily predominates in the 
plan, but it is designed to make the range of selection comprehen- 
sive, so as to include works of every variety of theme, from old 
authors as well as new, and attractive to students as well as general 
readers. 


*#* Any volume in the series mailed post-paid to any address within the 
fnited States, on receipt of the price. 


D. APPLETON A €0., 549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 


APFLETONS’ NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES. 


MI8EEIC0EDIA. 

A STORY. 




E, LYNN LINTON. 


V- 


COfe - ' 

A, 

'03 

Y 


NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

M9 AND 551 BEGAD WAY. 

1878. 




MISERICORDIA. 


I. 

wrongs do not make one right ; and 
suspicion and jealousy are as wrong as flirting and 
deception, Millicent mine,” said her elder sister, 
Helen, representing philosophy and wise conduct. 

“Right or wrong, I will not bear it ! ” was the 
passionate reply, tears flashing in a pair of bright 
brown eyes, and as much anger as sorrow quiver- 
ing in the lines of a rose-red, pouting mouth. 

“ Well, I have advised you ! You will come 
the worst off in the end if you cross swords with 
Koel about Mrs. Fairclough,” the other returned. 
“ You are not strong enough for him, and you will 
only cut your own fingers if you begin to fight.” 

“ I do not care if I do, Helen ! If I cut my 
own fingers, as you say, I shall at least have cut 
hers ; and that will be something,” said Millicent, 
looking undeniably beautiful between passion and 
anger ; but though so beautiful, somehow not 


4 


MISERICORDIA. 


quite satisfactory — less the ideal woman of our 
dreams, tacens et placens^ than a passionate and 
exaggerated girl who was always up in the clouds 
for baseless ecstasies or down in the depths of de- 
spair for imaginary sorrows ; always either loving 
or hating without good reason for either, and as 
excessive in gratitude as she was apt for offense — 
a girl never under the guidance of reason, and who 
knew as little of common-sense as of patience and 
self-control — a girl who was allowed on all hands 
to have a “ good heart ” in the abstract, but whose 
temper and daily bearing in the concrete were 
trials sometimes insupportable to those with whom 
she came in contact. 

“ My dear child, you are a little fool ! ” said 
Helen, with more truth than courtesy. 

Abuse is no argument,” returned Millicent, 
so far her sister’s dialectical superior ; you have 
said that about twice a day ever since I can re- 
member. Once more does not count.” 

“ Have I ? It is a pity that, having said it 
some thousands of times, you should not have prof- 
ited by the information,” said Helen, with pro- 
voking quietness ; “ for I cannot say that you 
grow wiser, dear, as you grow older — rather the 
contrary.” 

Perhaps not ; but perhaps you will find, some 
day, that I have a little more sense than you give 
me credit for, and that I am not quite such a fool 
as I look,” retorted Millicent, on her dignity. 


MISERICORDIA. 


5 


^^"When I find it I will welcome it,” said Helen. 
‘^But I do not think you will show this hidden 
wisdom by quarreling with Noel, and trying to 
^find out all about Mrs. Fairclough,’ as you call it 
— poor soul ! as if there was anything to find out 
about her at all ! — because you have a fit of jeal- 
ousy. For if there is no real foundation for your 
jealousy, it is contemptible ; and if there is, it is 
humiliating. A girl of spirit has only one course 
open to her if her lover prefers some one else ; and 
a girl of sense does not torment herself and every 
one about her with fads and fancies.” 

We can all speak calmly on what does not 
touch us,” said Millicent ; ^^but you are no more 
patient than any one else, Helen, when you are 
personally concerned.” 

^^No?” laughed the other, good-humoredly. 

“ That means. Mill, that I am almost as silly as 
you are sometimes.” 

And a great deal more disagreeable,” flashed 
out Millicent. No, I did not mean that ! ” she 
said, going up to her sister and kissing her with 
quick repentance ; it is I who am cross and dis- 
agreeable. You are always good, Helen, and I 
am, as you say, a little fool, and never shall be any- 
thing else.” 

“But dearer than all the wise folks in the . 
world,” said Helen, affectionately smoothing the 
tumbled hair lying loose on the flushed cheeks, and 
giving back her kiss with interest. On which 


6 


MISERICORDIA. 


their little quarrel passed, as their quarrels always 
did, into a rosary of mutual endearments ; each 
saying that the other was the sweetest kind of 
thing to be found within the four seas — the one 
for childlike charm, the other for maternal tender- 
ness — and that when they wrangled, as they did 
so often, they meant nothing by it but to express 
their love for each other in another form — like the 
strange tenses of irregular verbs — always the same 
verb, however oddly metamorphosed. 

Their quarrel now was on what was beginning 
to be a dangerously frequent theme — Millicent’s 
jealousy of Noel Thorburn’s attentions to the 
widow who had lately come to Marston, a Mrs. 
Fairclough, of the Cottage ; and her growing de- 
termination to bring down on the peccant heads 
of fiance and acquaintance alike the punishment 
which, whatever it might be, could not be heavy 
enough for their deserts or her desires. For the 
average Englishwoman is a rather restricted kind 
of proprietress over husband or lover, all things 
considered ; and Millicent Despard was by no 
means superior to that average. 

Looking at things calmly, and without the ex- 
aggeration of passion, it seemed somewhat difficult 
to bring down punishment of any kind on the 
head of the pretty widow whose only sin was her 
beauty and her sole crime her charm. For the six 
months of her life at Marston she had lived with 
the most blameless propriety ; and without show- 


MISERICORDIA. 


7 



ing that she wished to propitiate society, had done 
nothing that could he considered as offense or de- 
fiance. She mixed herself up in no gossip ; put 
herself forward in no social movement ; was al- 
ways courteous and sweet and gentle and delight- 
ful ; and if ever a woman’s armor may be said to 
be invulnerable, surely Mrs. Fairclough’s was with- 
out a loose joint anywhere. 

But, for all that, Millicent Despard, who was 
no more her equal in mind or character than a 
robin-redbreast is equal to a bird-of -paradise, be- 
ing jealous of Noel Thorburn’s unconcealed ad- 
miration, vowed that she would bring the fair 
widow to shame and her lover to confusion of face 
— though how this was to be done remained as 
yet among the unformed things of chaos and the 
future. 

Perhaps it was only natural that Millicent 
should resent Clarissa Fairclough’s personality. 
Before her arrival, she herself, the pretty younger 
daughter of the retired admiral, had been the ac- 
knowledged beauty of the place ; and if one’s 
world is but a nutshell, one holds by it as one’s 
kingdom, and not one among us but resents at- 
tempts at dispossession. Every woman is proud 
of her nutshell where she has been the queen em- 
met, and ruled over the fancies and feelings of her 
brother emmets ; where she has been the ‘‘ cyno- 
sure ” and the object of general admiration. Mil- 
licent had been specially proud of hers. Not to 


8 


MISERICORDIA. 


speak of Frank Hardisty, had it not included 
among her tribute the love of Noel Thor burn — or 
what passed for love with him and her alike? 
And was not rich and handsome Noel Thorburn, 
of Thorburn Hall, the matrimonial prize of Mars- 
ton ? And if he did just a little frighten her be- 
cause he was grave and intense, and she, though 
quick to feel and fond of superlatives, was more 
shallow than strong and more noisy than deep, yet 
it pleased her vanity, and fulfilled her ambition, 
and woke up something that she said was love, to 
be counted as his future wife. And where lives 
the woman who, these gratified, is not at peace 
with herself and life all through ? 

But, since Mrs. Fairclough’s arrival at the Cot- 
/ tage, things had been going a little avrry between 
! Millicent and her lover ; and without any direct 
breach there had been various passages-at-arms, 
where the weapons on the one side had been min- 
gled tears and fiery accusations ; to which the 
other had opposed now the impenetrable shield of 
cold reserve,. and now had condescended to gather 
up these vague accusations in one hand, to prove 
what mere reeds and straws they were. In all 
these encounters Helen stood Noel’s faithful friend, 
and never scrupled to tell her young sister what 
she thought of her folly in “ making a fuss 
about nothing” — imperiling a solid reality for 
the sake of a shadowy fancy, and making every 
one uncomfortable, as the tax to be paid to her 


MISERICORDIA. 


9 


\ 

\ 

wounded vanity and silly jealousy. But Millicent, 
if good-hearted in a way, was, as we know, pas- 
sionate and inconsiderate ; and her jealousy and 
heart-burnings increased rather than diminished, 
in spite of all that Helen might advise or Noel 
himself aver. 

After this little brush between the sisters had 
been smoothed away, Helen, in her quality of dis- 
trict visitor as well as elder sister and practical 
worker, went into the village on her rounds. It 
was her “ day,” when the sheep for whose condi- 
tion she was so far responsible had to be rallied 
and set to rights ; and as Millicent was too unsatiB- 
factory a lamb on her own account to have f-he 
herding of others, she was left at home with her 
crewel- work and a novel, which were more in her 
way than soup-tickets or tracts ; while her sister 
made herself hideous in her visiting costume, and 
a nuisance to the poor whom she went to see. 

Soon after she left, the small gate at the upper 
end of the garden opened, and then shut with a 
bang, as Frank Hardisty, the rector’s son, came 
hurriedly in. 

No better heart nor thicker skull could be 
found in what showy talkers are so fond of call- 
ing the length and breadth of the land, than the 
heart and skull possessed by Frank Hardisty — 
once stroke in the winning university boat, and 
now clerk in the Foreign Office. He was the most 
generous, the most affectionate, the least suspi- 


10 


MISERICORDIA. 


cious, the handsomest, the most transparent, and 
the most blundering young man to be met with ; 
but every one liked him, and all said. If not clever 
— poor, dear Frank ! — he was good ; and goodness 
goes farther than cleverness any day. It does not ; 
but then truth is not always the kernel of popular 
sayings ; and in this saying is very little kernel in- 
deed. For, of all the mischief done in the world, 
nine-tenths come from folly, while only one part 
is due to intentional evil-doing. 

Millicent, small, dark, richly-colored, vivacious, 
was an excellent contrast to Frank Hardisty, large, 
"Numbering, good-tempered, slow — fair and frank 
as a Scandinavian god, and strong as an ox of the 
Campagna. Perhaps it was this contrast that had 
ascinated him ; for ever since they had been boy 
and girl together — though they were not much 
more now — Frank Hardisty had laid his heart at 
Millicent’s feet, and Millicent, after the manner of 
her kind, had trampled on it. He was her dog, 
her slave, her footstool, her plaything ; but he was 
constant and patient, and, if as stupid as the pro- 
verbial giant, as tenacious as the proverbial bull- 
dog, and as good-natured as he was strong. 

With him she was always at ease. Sure of 
her holding, she gave herself no trouble to keep 
him ; and certain of his admiration, whatever she 
did or said, took no care to control the tempers 
and naughtinesses which brought down all sorts 
of rebuke on her curly head from her sister, who 


MISERICORDIA. 


11 


h 

scolded her soundly — and even more painful lect- 
ures from the lover who wished her to he more 
nohle than Nature and her small-sized brains would 
allow. But Frank, patient, adoring, blind, ac- 
cepted everything with the same unquestioning 
admiration ; and when his dark-eyed divinity 
was more unreasonable than usual, only thought 
what she must have suffered to have come to 
this ! ” and blamed those who had offended her, not 
her who had become offended. 

He came to her now to wish her good-by. He 
was off to London to his office by the afternoon 
train ; and he came almost too opportunely. 
Though Millicent had made up her quarrel with 
Helen, she had neither conquered her jealousy nor 
forgiven Noel, and she was still thinking what she 
could do to punish him, and above all how she 
could find out something against Mrs. Fairclough. 
She did not know that there was anything against 
her at all ; and if there were, she had not the 
slightest clew to guide her. But jealousy is an in- 
genious kind of thing in general, and things which 
are not easy to find are not impossible to create. 

After they had been sitting together for some 
time, “ How I hate Mrs. Fairclough ! ” cried Mil- 
licent, suddenly, dpropos of nothing. 

Why ? ” asked blundering Frank, who could 
never read between the lines, and who thought 
Clarissa Fairclough only second to Millicent her- 
self for delightfulness and charm. 


12 


MISERICORDIA. 


‘‘ Because she is a wretch ! ” said Millioent, 
with the air of one who has propounded an unan- 
swerable argument, and explained to the fullest 
the knotty point of a crux. 

Yes ? ” said Frank, his fair, Baldur-like face 
broadened into a smile. 

How stupid you are, Frank ! ” cried Millicent, 
pettishly ; and the smile faded away, like Baldur 
himself hidden under clouds, as the young fellow 
looked penitent and downcast. 

‘‘ But tell me why you hate her ? ” he asked, 
after a pause ; during which Millicent had em- 
broidered half a daisy with vicious energy. “ She 
seems a very unoffending person, and is always 
good to every one.” 

^‘She flirts with Hoel,” answered Millicent, a 
sudden wicked glance in her handsome eyes. 

Frank’s face changed at this. True, he loved 
Millicent better than himself, and cared more for 
her happiness than his own ; but human nature 
has its laws, as generosity has its limits, and, if he 
had not resented, he had surely not rejoiced over 
this engagement, which had given to another the 
prize so long and so faithfully coveted for himself. 
Indeed, he scarcely liked to talk of it or to recog- 
nize it as a stable fact. For always in the depths 
of his heart, at the back as it were of his con- 
sciousness, lay the unspoken hope that something 
would happen to break it off, and transfer the girl 
to the only man in the world who could love her 


MISERICORDIA. 


13 


\- 

as she deserved to be loved — and, so far, the only 
man in the world worthy of her. 

She is very much to blame if she does that,” . 
he said, heroically. 

He thought it no harm to love Millicent for 
his own part, and would have taken her from 
Noel Thorburn at any moment if he could ; but 
when it came to Clarissa Fairclough’s interfering 
with Millicent’s property — touching on her pre- 
rogative and making her uneasy — then he became 
alive to the iniquity of meddling with bespoken 
goods ; and the sin of both Noel and the widow 
was evident, and not to be forgiven. 

But she does ; do I not tell you so ? ” cried 
Millicent, her blood, never long cool, beginning to 
boil. I am sure she is a very wicked woman, 
Frank ! I am sure she is ! I only wish I could 
find out something about her ; for I am as sure as 
of my own existence that she is not what she 
seems to be.” 

“I don’t know about that,” began Frank, 
doubtfully ; but Millicent stopped him shortly, 
sharply, as her manner was : 

She is not ! ” she said, with authoritative pas- 
sion ; and Frank succumbed. 

Well, perhaps she is not, if you say so,” he 
answered, humbly. “ I can’t say it ever occurred 
to me myself to suspect her ; but then I do not 
see these things very clearly.” 

^^No, you never see anything,” said Milli- 


14 


MISERICORDIA. 


cent, contemptuously. “You are as blind as — 
as — ” 

“ As a beetle,” Frank added, rounding off the 
sentence with unruffled good-humor. 

“ And blinder,” returned Millicent. 

“ Perhaps you are right — indeed, I know you 
are ; but then you have brains for two,” said 
Frank, glad to glorify his divinity even at the cost 
of his own abasement. 

“At all -events, I have enough to see that 
something is not quite straight with Mrs. Fair- 
clough, and to feel it my duty to ffnd out all about 
her. Noel ought to have his eyes opened, and be 
protected from her,” she added, with a quasi-ma- 
ternal air, not without its charm, though it had 
also its sting, for the poor young fellow. 

“ I should have thought Noel Thorburn man 
of the world enough to have his eyes opened, and 
to be able to protect himself,” he said, simply, 
meaning no sarcasm ; but on Millicent saying, 
peremptorily, “ No, he is not ; he is far too good 
to suspect any one, and Mrs. Fairclough is just 
the dangerous kind of woman to take him in ! ” 
he succumbed again, and said, “ Yes.” 

But he could not help thinking a little ruefully, 
that what was virtuous simplicity and manly 
high-mindedness in Noel had just been snubbed 
in him as blind stupidity, to which even the paral- 
lel of a clumsy beetle was not sufficient. And 


MISERICORDIA. 


15 


with the thought he sighed at the unjust appor- 
tionment of love — and Millicent Despard. 

You must find out, Frank,” then said Milli- 
cent. 

But, Millicent, find out what ? ” he returned, 
with genuine distress. 

For Millicent he would do much and dare all ; 
but extracting sunbeams from cucumbers was a 
task no more difficult than to find out evil of a 
lady who lived so harmlessly, and gave so few in- 
dications of dangerous shallows anywhere, as Mrs. 
Fairclough, of the Cottage. 

How was he to begin ? — to whom apply ? She 
had very little family history to relate, but what 
she had was freely bestowed on all alike. She had 
been born and brought up abroad ; had traveled 
much ; been married young ; her father and 
mother were dead ; so, it was to be supposed, was 
her husband, since he was not there and she never 
spoke of him ; she had no brothers nor sisters, no 
uncles nor aunts ; and the companion who lived 
with her, Mrs. Sutcliffe, knew no more of her past 
than the people at Marston — that is, no more than 
she had been told ; which was assumed to be every- 
thing. She had been engaged in London and 
brought down with the rest of the baggage ; and 
as she was a self-indulgent, sleepy, tranquil kind 
of soul, whose main object in life was to slip 
through the teeth of all harrows easily, and never 
use two words where one would do, she neither 


16 


MISERICORDIA. 


r 

I 

sought to penetrate mysteries nor made them 
where they did not exist, nor gave herself or 
others any extra trouble whatsoever ; being deep- 
ly impressed with the wisdom of letting well alone 
when she had got that well in hand. So that the 
task of tracking Mrs. Fairclough’s past, and of 
finding out spots in her ermine and false steps in 
her walking, seemed wellnigh hopeless, and might 
have appalled a braver man than even honest 
Frank. 

“Find out what?” repeated Millicent, snap- 
pishly. “ How stupid you are, Frank ! If I knew 
what it was, I should not ask you to find it out. 
But you must,” she continued, assurance strength- 
ening with her word, after the manner of imjDul- 
sive people with strong convictions and woolly 
brains. “ Hemember, I rely on you ; and you 
are the only friend I have ! ” — a little pathos flung 
into these last words. 

“You know that I would do anything in the 
world for you, Millicent,” said Frank, with effu- 
sion ; his delight at being employed and trusted 
a little dashed by the apparent hopelessness as 
well as the cruelty and not over-honorable nature 
of his task. “ But what on earth can I do in this ? 
Whom can I ask? Where can I go? It is 
like looking for a pebble on the sea-shore ! What 
can I do ? ” 

“ Find out,” said Millicent ; “ and if you care 
for me as much as you pretend to do, you will.” 


MISERICORDIA. 


17 


\ 


I care for you ! ” said the poor fellow. 

“Yes, if ! ” repeated Millicent. 

“There is not much doubt of that,” he an- 
swered ; “ never has been for the last ten years — 
as long as I can remember, indeed.” 

“ Then prove it, and unmask Mrs. Fairclough,” 
she said ; and with that she put both her hands in 
his, in the manner of a prayer, a promise, and a 
caress, all in one. 

And Frank Hardisty — honest gentleman as he 
was, and the very reverse of unfriendly to Mrs. 
Fairclough — was from that moment consecrated 
to the office of an amateur detective ; pledged to 
prove the beautiful young widow unworthy, if 
he could : all, that Millicent Despard’s jealous lit- 
tle soul might be satisfied, and some crumbs of her 
regard be flung for the sake of gratitude to his 
side. 

But if Vivienne could deceive Merlin, what 
may not be pardoned to a youth who had no spe- 
cial wisdom to guide him, and whose heart had 
been enslaved ever since he was a big, lumbering 
schoolboy home for his holidays from Rugby, to 
whom Millicent, then a little girl, one day confided 
the secret of an undiscovered nut-tree in the 
wood, and graciously allowed him to risk his neck 
that she might carry home the spoil ? Since then 
it had been always the same kind of thing. He 
had worshiped and she had ruled ; he had done 
the work and she had enjoyed the results ; as now, 
2 


I 


18 MISERICORDIA. / 

when he was to unmask Mrs. Fairclough that she, 
Millicent, might be at peace with her lover, and 
his rival find happiness where now he had discom- 
fort. Poor Frank ! The chestnuts promised to 
be hard to get and hot when had ; but it was his 
office ; and though between them it was emphat- 
ically that one kissed and the other held up her 
cheek, yet if Millicent would but hold up her 
cheek, he would never weary of kissing it — for no 
other return than the permission ! 


II. 

While this conversation had been going on at 
/ Oak-Tree House, where the admiral and his two 
\ daughters lived, Noel Thorburn at the Cottage 
^ was engaged in proving to Clarissa Fairclough 
how much better it was to work in pure colors, 
subtilely touched in so that the whole should 
blend together, rather than to mix the paints on 
the palette and work in, not to, results. 

He was an enthusiast for art, and Mrs. Fair- 
clough shared his tastes ; while Millicent had no 
more knowledge how to draw a tree or a face 
than he had how to paint another Madonna della 
Seggiola. And naturally — intellectual sympathy 
being so strong ! — the companionship of this beau- 
tiful young woman, who knew all the finest pict- 
ures in Europe, and could say where this was to 


MISEEICORDIA. 


19 


I 

be found and where that, and could even indicate 
the very place on the wall where each hung, was 
pleasant enough to him. They had many things 
in common, on the basis of art ; and each enjoyed 
what the other could say. 

It was intellectual sympathy — artistic harmo- 
nies — alone which drew Noel Thorburn so fre- 
quently to the Cottage. Mrs. Fairclough might 
have been old and ugly, he used to think at such 
times when he stopped short and looked at him- 
self and where he was drifting — or if indeed he 
was drifting anywhere — and he would still have 
found himself in that pretty and tranquilizing 
drawing-room six days a week, as now. It was 
only the paint-brush and the palette that drew 
him there ; in no wise Nature, save as this was 
interpreted by Art. 

And with this self -explanation he was content ; 
disturbed neither in his conscience nor his securi- 
ty ; and more vexed for her own sake than for his, 
when Millicent Despard gave way to a fit of jeal- 
ousy more severe than usual, and made herself 
and every one else uncomfortable because Mrs. 
Fairclough was too lavish with her lake, and Noel 
Thorburn tried to teach her that shadows should 
be kept cool. 

He was sitting now side by side with her at 
the table in the drawing-room where she had her 
painting materials, discussing methods and ren- 
derings with the passion of an enthusiast ; but 


20 MISEEICORDU. / 

unconsciously finding in the beautiful woman her- 
self the most interesting part of the lesson. 

For she was beautiful — rarely so ; with a face 
like that of the Cenci ; the same coloring of hair, 
skin, and eyes ; the same expression of unutter- 
able sadness, but with finer modeling of the cheeks, 
and a handsomer because less childish and more 
expressive mouth. She was, moreover, tall and 
graceful, and her hands were noticeably beautiful. 

Noel was tall, too, but black to her ruddy 
gold, olive to her cream ; a fine, well-built, sol- 
dierly-looking man, quiet and grave in manner ; 
gentle in action, as real strength always is ; and 
patient with the patience by which deep passion 
knows how to mask itself. 

In the farthest corner of the room, placid Mrs. 
Sutcliffe tatted strips of useless lumber, peacefully 
watching the two set between her and the light ; 
and thanking her good genius for the obstacle be- 
tween them of Noel’s engagement to Millicent 
Despard. She was a keen-witted woman in her 
own way, if indolent in her habits ; like a cat 
blinking and purring in the sun, but with her 
eyes never fairly closed, and always aware of the 
bird on the bough and the mouse behind the 
straw. She was one who, while seeming to see 
nothing, sees all, and understands more of the ob- 
served game than the players themselves. 

A faint flush in her usually colorless face gave 
Mrs. Fairclough’s beauty more life and less statu- 


MISERICORDIA. 


21 


esque repose than usually belonged to it ; but 
Noel’s raven-black hair, and eyes of a brown so 
dark as to be also black, were made more striking 
still by the increased paleness of his. He was 
looking at her earnestly while he talked ; she 
looking down on her work, smiling as she lis- 
tened. It was only about the colors to be seen 
on the hills, at their loveliest to-day ; and how 
that farthest range was to be rendered so as to 
make it distant yet distinct, painting it in tender- 
ly, yet keeping it solid. But Noel liked to talk, 
and Mrs. Fairclough liked to listen ; and though 
her voice was low and her smile was sweet, sure- 
ly there was no danger to be got out of a discus- 
sion respecting the local value of Naples yellow 
or Vandyke brown, or whether the bounding line 
came the hundredth part of an inch more to the 
side than had been drawn ! Nevertheless, Mrs. 
Sutclitfe watched between her half-closed eyes, 
purring over her work, and meditating. 

“After Italy, I find these colors so much less 
glowing,” said Mrs. Fairclough, with the slight- 
est, prettiest, daintiest Italian accent. It was a 
voice and an accent which somehow reminded 
one of fruit, as there are faces which are like 
flowers. 

“I wish that I had met with you in Italy,” 
said Noel ; “ we should have made some fine 
studies about Florence and the Bay of Naples.” 

“Very fine,” she answered, quite naturally; 


22 


MISERICORDIA. 


but she did not echo bis wish that they had met, 
which meant a regret that they had not. 

‘‘We must often have been quite close together 
without knowing it,” continued Noel. 

“Yes, often,” she assented. 

“ What a pity that by some happy chance we 
did not become acquainted there — five years ago ! ” 
he said, with almost a sigh. 

“ I am a fatalist,” answered the widow, tran- 
quilly as to manner ; but her smile a little faded 
and her pretty faint flush paled. 

“ Apropos of our not meeting in Italy ? ” with 
a tender kind of regretful accent. 

“ Yes,” she said ; but though her voice was 
not so tender as his, she meant more. 

“Fatalism is too convenient a theory to be 
either wise or true,” Noel continued, after a short 
pause. “ It would send all our energies to sleep 
if acted on, and it accounts for too much.” 

“But there is something in it,” she an- 
swered. 

“Not more than there is in every theory.” 

“ Surely, if you go by the merest accident to a 
place, see there the person who changes your 
whole life, and if he — or she — ^has also gone there 
by the merest accident, and you are introduced to 
each other by chance — what is that but fate?” 
she asked, speaking slowly but with evident in- 
tention. 

“ Or chance. The doctrine of chance has quite 


MISERICORDIA. 


23 


■ 1 

as much to say for itself as that of fate ; and the 
doctrine of coincidence more.” 

She shook her head. 

No,” she said, with pretty pertinacity ; I 
believe in fate.” 

He smiled. 

‘‘Was it fate, or chance, that brought you 
here ? ” he asked. 

She dipped her brush into the water unneces- 
sarily. 

“ Fate,” she answered. 

“ To be consistent, you must, of course, make 
but the one answer to everything,” he said. 

“ Yes ; only the one.” 

“ In that case we come to a system in which 
there is no free will, no elasticity, no possible ar- 
rangement by man of his own circumstances ; all 
is done for us, and we are mere children mar- 
shaled like puppets by a power beyond ourselves 
and superior to all our efforts.” 

“Yes ; that is just what I think,” the widow 
answered. 

“ So you do away with moral responsibility ? 
— and blame for wrong-doing is as unjust as praise 
for virtue is undeserved ? ” 

“We cannot help ourselves — we must,” she 
answered quietly ; but this time it was he who 
shook his head. 

“No man of an energetic nation, or himself 
active by temperament and nature, would agree 


24 


MISERTCORDIA. 


with you,” he said. “ W e feel too much the 
power which we have of manipulating circumstance 
to be fatalists. It is a doctrine which suits better 
women who are acted for and acted on, and men 
who are not in the forefront of the world’s activ- 
ity, than Englishmen, say, who aspire both to gov- 
ern themselves and direct their generation.” 

“ Dreams ! ” she answered. “No one governs. 
A few think that they do ; but we are all mere 
machines, ordered by an influence which we do not 
understand and cannot resist.” 

“ No, no,” he said. 

“ Yes,” she answered ; “ yes ; and ” — ^lifting 
her eyes to his — “ some day you will think with 
me.” 

Her face, which had grown quite pale as she 
had spoken, flushed when she ended with more 
than the faint bloom of the first part of the inter- 
view. The conversation evidently touched her 
nearly ; and she as evidently spoke with a mean- 
ing deeper than that conveyed by her words only. 
It was her own life’s history by which she was 
skirting, and her marriage the fate to which she 
was alluding. 

What else could it be ? thought Noel, watching 
her face as he might have studied the Cenci in the 
Barberini, wishing, perhaps, that the one could live 
and speak to him, and that the other — Well, 
what of the other ? What could he wish from it 
more than he already had, with dark-eyed Milli- 


MISERICORDIA. 


25 


V 

cent IX spard at Oak-Tree House, not half a mile 
off, embroidering a morning wrapper for the time 
w:hen she should be mistress of the Hall and the 
proud wife of its master? A man cannot have 
everything, and many would have said that Noel 
Thorburn had already more than his share, in that 
he held such a pretty promessa S2oosa as Millicent, 
and such a charming friend as Mrs. Fairclough. 

After this the conversation passed on to a thou- 
sand interesting topics, whereon the two developed 
the most seductive harmony of taste and senti- 
ment, and through which it seemed as if they 
grew nearer to each other with each moment that 
flew, each word that was said ; and then Noel, 
looking at his watch, and finding that he had not 
left himself half an hour for Millicent Despard, , 
took his leave hurriedly, and went away in a cer- 
tain disorder that did not escape Mrs. Fairclough, 
who pondered on it when alone with a mingled 
sense of fear and delight, as now she consulted 
her own heart and now measured the circum- 
stances in which both he and she stood. 

But when Noel had reached the top of the 
lane, to the right of which lay Millicent and Oak- 
Tree House, and to the left Thorburn Hall and 
solitude, after hesitating for a moment and look- 
ing at his watch — as if looking at it could change 
the hour — he took the latter, and his fiancee was 
left unvisited to-day. He had meant to go to her, 
but somehow the task was too ungrateful to be 


36 


MISERICORDIA. 


i 

undertaken. He had been very happy at |fee Cot- 
tage. Mrs. Fairclough was the kind of woman 
whose society made him happy. Her gentleness 
pleased his taste, her sympathy soothed his nerves ; 
she was bright-witted, and could talk on other 
matters besides the latest bit of local gossip or the 
last new novel from the library — which formed 
the boundary-line of poor Millicent’s intellectual 
kingdom ; and he was, moreover, getting a little 
weary of the perpetual scenes which the girl’s 
petulant jealousy forced on him. Wherefore, 
actuated by all these considerations, he left his 
visit to Oak-Tree House unpaid ; and Helen Des- 
pard’s evening was decidedly uncomfortable in 
consequence. 

, The next day broke fair and bright, and Noel, 
seeming to shake himself clear from certain haunt- 
ing influences good neither for himself nor others 
to cherish, rode off to Oak-Tree House early, not 
waiting for the afternoon. This was as it should 
be — impatience of a legitimate kind, sitting well 
on a handsome man whose future blessedness was 
centred in a piquant, changeable little face where 
the child resisted still the woman, and which unit- 
ed the fresh beauty of the one with the dawning 
consciousness, the stronger capacities, of the other. 

He went into the drawing-room, where the 
two sisters were sitting, rehearsing the drama of 
yesterday — that is, quarreling without stint on 
his iniquities, Mrs. Fairclough’s sins, and Milli- 


MISERICORDIA. 


27 


V 

cent’s determination not to put up with it any lon- 
ger — Helen, as usual, preaching peace, hut as one 
crying in the wilderness and preaching in vain. 

As Noel entered, Helen got up to receive him, 
as she always did, cordially. Sweet-natured but 
not personally interesting, she was one of those 
bits of human padding with which the world 
abounds, kind and good, but with more common- 
sense than pure intellect, and a torch-bearer for 
Mrs. Grundy rather than for iconoclasts or the 
gods ; a woman born to be an elder sister or the 
aunt of many nephews ; or if a mother, then as 
the wife of some dull piece of respectable medi- 
ocrity, bringing into life a brood of commonplace 
citizens and citizenesses, who would neither achieve 
glory nor come to shame, but who would keep to 
the lower walks of life contentedly, and do their 
humble work without a flaw. 

‘^Welcome ! ” she said, kindly ; but Millicent, 
sitting with bent head and flushed face, went on 
working diligently, and took no notice of her lov- 
er’s arrival. 

He went up to her smiling. 

ell?” he said pleasantly, but he knew his fate. 

Still Millicent did not look up. She said, 
‘‘Good-morning,” instinctively, but she said it 
shortly, sharply, snappishly, and her needle clicked 
against her thimble as the symphony reechoing 
her voice. 

He sat down by her with perfect good-humor. 


28 


MISERICORDIA. 


Perhaps his conscience a little reproached him and 
made him more than usually patient with her — 
and he was seldom impatient. 

‘‘Well?” he said again, after a pause, during 
which he had vainly tried to make her look at him 
and she had as pertinaciously resisted, and kept 
her eyes fixed on her work ; “ are you not going 
to speak to me to-day ? ” 

“ It does not seem a matter of much impor- 
tance to you whether I do or not,” fiashed out Mil- 
licent, tears beginning to gather in her dark eyes 
and to dim her sight. 

Helen moved a little aimlessly about the room, 
humming softly to herself. 

“You see that it does,” said Noel, “since 
your silence makes me unhappy.” 

“Unhappy ! ” cried Millicent, in a voice full of 
weak sarcasm and strong passion. 

“Yes, unhappy. When I see you uncomfort- 
able and estranged, can I be anything else?” 
was the reply, made softly, but wanting in the true 
ring all the same. 

“ It is your fault that I am unhappy ! ” returned 
Millicent. Her work suddenly dropped on her 
lap, and her tears were now falling without con- 
cealment or the effort to restrain them. 

“ How is it my fault ? ” he asked. 

He knew the answer, but it was a question 
which had to be made — a bad moment that had to 
be lived through. 


MISERICORDIA. 


29 


Yv'>u wonder at my being unhappy, when you 
neglect me as you do ? ” said Millicent. You 
never come near me. You are all your time at 
that horrid woman’s. You seem as if you quite 
hated me, Noel ; and then you coolly wonder at 
my being unhappy ! ” 

I thought we agreed, last time, that you were 
a very dear little thing, and that we were to have 
no more doubts or jealousies — no more scenes or 
turmoils — and smiles only, not tears,” he returned, 
calmly ; but he gave a weary little sigh as he 
spoke. He remembered the tender grace, the 
sweet and soothing calm, of the fair woman at the 
Cottage ; and these scenes with Millicent, so con- 
stantly recurring, seemed so childish and so weari- 
some ! They heated the atmosphere, and robbed 
it of all sense of freedom or repose. 

“Yes, you sigh when you are with me. 
You treat me as a child that you have to keep in 
good-humor with a few soft words — a few sugar- 
plums — and then you sigh ! ” cried Millicent, pas- 
sionately. “ How do you expect me to bear your 
cruelty, your neglect, Noel? How long do you 
think this kind of thing is to go on ? It has gone 
on too long as it is, and I am broken-hearted ! ” 
weeping. 

“ Hush ! hush, Millicent ! ” said Helen, from the 
distance, rapidly calculating the chances of a proud 
man’s temper and the price to be paid for a silly 
little girl’s sillier outburst. “Noel, do not take 


30 


MISERICORDIA. 


any notice of what she says. She is cross and 
hysterical, and makes herself more miserable than 
any one else.” 

I can see that she is out of sorts,” said ISToel ; 
hut I do not want to make her unhappy. If she 
wants to be free from me, do you think I would 
keep her against her will ? Impossible ! If I only 
knew what she does really want, I would do my 
best to please her — within the limits of my own 
freedom and self-respect.” 

These last words were said with a sudden stif- 
fening of voice and manner — of all his expressions 
of mood that which Helen most dreaded. 

‘‘You must be patient with her,” she said. 
“ She is only a child yet, and though tiresome and 
tinreasonable enough, still she has a good heart, 
and will come right in the end.” 

“ I do not want your advocacy, Helen ! ” cried 
Millicent, angrily. “ I am neither a child to be 
coaxed into good-humor, nor an ill-tempered half- 
maniac to be forgiven because I am not a respon- 
sible being, as you try to make me out. I know 
exactly what I feel, and what I think is my due ; 
and if you and Mr. Thorburn do not respect me, 
at least I will respect myself.” 

“If I do anything that hurts your self-re- 
spect — ” began Noel. 

“ If ! ” cried Millicent. 

He rose from his chair, looking stern. 

Millicent, who had been secretly applauding 


MISERICORDIA. 


31 


herself for her spirit, stole one glance up at his 
face, and began to be frightened. She wanted to 
quarrel — to give vent to her dissatisfaction — to 
show her passion, and to bring him to her knees ; 
but she did not want to offend and perhaps lose 
him. She was fond of him in her way, and her 
future position as his wife was too brilliant to for- 
feit lightly. Still, between temper and calcula- 
tion, jealousy and common-sense, in a girl of her 
nature, there was not much doubt which would be 
chosen; and she fulfilled the law of her being to 
the letter. 

He stood before her for a few minutes, his face 
stern, his attitude one of offended pride and cold 
expectation united. He was waiting for her to 
make some sign that should set the lines of their 
future relations, either for good or evil, continu- 
ance or rupture. 

You know you do behave to me shamefully ! ” 
began Millicent. 

I do not know,” said Noel, hastily, emphasiz- 
ing the negative. 

“You do!” repeated Millicent. “You neg- 
lect me for Mrs. Fairclough in the most open man- 
ner. All the place, is talking about it — and a 
woman, too, that you scarcely know, and who may 
be anything — a mere adventuress, for aught we 
know.” 

“ Millicent ! ” cried Helen. 

“ Understand me once for all,” said Noel. “I 


32 


MISERICORDIA. 


will not have Mrs. Fairclough’s name mixed irp in 
these silly quarrels. I have said so once before, ^ 
and you know that I mean what I say. Say to 
me and of me what you will, but her name shall 
be kept sacred ! ” - 

Yes, her name is to be kept sacred ! She is 
to be cared for and protected on all sides, and I 
may be spoken of by every one as a girl whose 
lover neglects her for another woman ; but I am 
to bear it all in silence, and not say a word ! She 
is everything, and I am nothing ! ” 

Millicent said this with that irritating manner, 
half-passionate, half-sarcastic, by which people 
know how to make themselves so intensely dis- 
agreeable. She was an adept at the art, and often 
put it into requisition. 

‘‘ This has lasted long enough,” then said Noel. 

“ I must leave you now, Millicent. When you 
want to see me again, send for me; and when 
you send for me, tell me how you wish that we 
should meet. Our future relations rest with 
you.” 

Millicent, apologize — tell him you are sorry ! ” 
cried Helen. 

She had better have held her tongue. Left to 
herself, Millicent would probably have made one 
of her pretty, penitent, coaxing advances, which 
always subdued Noel and won his forgiveness ; 
but her sister’s exhortation roused her pride, and 
she turned away her head with a naughty, child- 


MISERICORDIA. 


33 


ish toss, indicative of anything rather than peni- 
tence. 

“ Good-by, then, till you send for me,” repeat- 
ed Noel. 

Till I send for you ! It will be a long good- 
by, if this is to be the only thing to break it ! ” 
cried Millicent. I am not in the habit of send- 
ing for any one, least of all gentlemen who do 
not come of their own accord.” 

Good-by, Helen,” said Noel, disdaining reply. 
Why argue with a petulant child ? I must de- 
pend on you to bring your sister to reason, or to 
inform me of her unreasonableness.” 

“ Oh, it will all come right ! ” cried Helen, cheer- 
fully. ^^It is only an April shower, Noel, and 
things will soon clear themselves. I know her.” 

‘‘ And I do not,” he returned ; “ having be- 
lieved her to be a rational person, and that she 
i loved me.” 

I On which he left the room, feeling more heav- 
i ily weighted with the pain of life self-inflicted, 
and the burden of its mistakes willfully under- 
taken, than he had ever felt before ; knowing 
now only too clearly that he neither loved Milli- 
cent truly, nor wished to make her his wife, but 
that he was bound by his promise, and, as a man 
of honor, compelled to fulfill his word when the 
time fixed on came; knowing, too — which perhaps 
was the worst of all to him — that he was not treat- 
ing her well ; that he was, if not quite playing a 
3 


34 


MISERICORDIA. 


double game, yet not quite playing an honest one. 
If only she would give him up of her own free 
will ! — if only he had not let himself be caught 
by a pretty face and a childishly-engaging manner, 
nor suffered himself to think that admiration 
meant love, and passing pleasure solid sympathy ! 

But it was of no use to lament over the things 
which were done. He was a man, not a child ; 
and of his free will he had engaged himself to 
Millicent Despard, and he must hold by his own 
work and make good his own words. Perhaps, 
had Mrs. Fairclough come to Marston six months 
earlier, the admiral’s pretty young daughter would 
never have been his affianced wife. 

He thought this out to himself in unmistak- 
able words as he rode slowly through the lane. 
He was tired of subterfuges, and suddenly tore 
off the veil from his own soul and confessed the 
truth, which he had long felt but had never until 
now recognized ; and when he came to the well- 
known fork, he turned his horse’s head in the di- 
rection of the Cottage with a certain sense of des- 
peration — like a half-ruined gambler risking one 
more stake in that perilous game, where he might 
lose all, but could scarcely win back what would 
make life desirable or honest. 

Soon all these thoughts were swept away like 
mist-wreaths when the sun is up, and he was sit- 
ting with Mrs. Fairclough where he sat yesterday, 
studying now the shadows on the hills, and now 


MISERIOORDIA. 


35 


the lights on the fair face that was so like that of 
the Cenci, as it bent over the table or lifted itself 
to look into his ; but in all its lights and phases, 
sweet, soft, sympathetic, soothing — how unlike the 
fiery fitfulness of pretty, childish, mindless Milli- 
cent Despard ! 

‘‘ Oh, that I had been wise in time ! ” thought 
Noel Thorburn, bitterly, as he covered his eyes 
with his hands and shut his lips close, like a man 
stifling an expression of pain. 


III. 

If one of Millicent’s gravest faults was her 
petulant jealousy acting on an ungoverned kind 
of temper, one of her sweetest virtues was her 
quick repentance. She was silly and undignified, 
but, as Helen said, she was good at heart, and 
after a time was sure to work round to the right 
point. Her errors were of a kind to mend them- 
selves by age and experience ; but the substantial 
good was a possession for all time ; and even 
now, if it did not always keep her straight, yet it 
minimized the evil by making her penitent and 
ashamed — which was so far a gain. 

So soon as Noel had left, the reaction set in, 
and if she could have called him back and hum- 
j bled herself, she would ; but the moment was lost, 

I and she was obliged to bear with the results of 


36 


MISERICORDIA. 


her own action. As Helen had told her, she was 
the weaker of the two, and though not quite fair- 
ly treated by her lover, as fair treatment between 
betrothed people goes, yet it was undeniably the 
wiser thing either to end with courage what she 
could not bear with patience, or to bear cheerfully 
what she could not end effectually. These inter- 
ludes of passion and jealousy and temper were 
neither one thing nor the other, and spoiled more 
than her return of good-humor and penitence 
could repair. 

Not being able to bring back Noel at this mo- 
ment, and not daring to go to his house, she wrote 
a broken-hearted and affectionate letter, be- 
seeching him to forgive her, and to come and tell 
her so, if not to-day then certainly to-morrow — 
to take her to his heart again, and to be once 
more the dear good Noel whom she loved and 
cared only to please ; for he knew how much she 
loved him, she said — with heavy blots made by her 
fast-falling tears — and how miserable she was when 
she had displeased him. 

It was a warm, impulsive, silly letter, but good- 
hearted and well-meaning ; and Millicent felt hap- 
pier when she had written it, and as if she had suc- 
cessfully conquered the evil spirit within her, and 
once more come out into the light of reasonable 
virtue and brave good sense. Then, in her charac- 
ter of a repentant Xantippe, she proposed to her 
sister to go and call on Mrs. Fairclough ; intend- 


MISERICORDIA. 


37 


ing by this act of grace to apologize mentally for 
having believed that Noel Thorburn was more in- 
terested in her than need be for strict friendship, 
and that she was less careful to repress his atten- 
tions than was right for strict justice. Also, she 
wanted to include in this unspoken apology a re- 
traction of what she had said to Frank Hardisty 
about the possible doubtfulness of the fair widow’s 
untold circumstances, and to rescind, as she would, 
that commission of inquiry to which she had bound 
him. She had a great deal to be sorry for, the 
weak-brained, warm-hearted, pretty, and impulsive 
child ; but, after all, if unwise to shoot her bolt as 
she had done, her shaft had struck not so very far 
from the centre ! 

Helen, glad to welcome her little sister’s return 
to sanity, assented both to the sending of the note 
and to the call on Mrs. Fairclough ; so the two set 
out after luncheon, and, after dropping the note at 
the Hall, went on to the Cottage, where they found 
Mrs. Fairclough at home. 

Sitting at the table, side by side like fellow- 
workers of the closest kind, the sisters fell upon 
the two artist-friends with a sense of finding out 
what it was desired should not be seen. And they 
— these fellow-workers, sitting here in such sug- 
gestive community of taste and occupation — ^had 
they as much the feeling of being caught as these 
others had of discovery ? Who can tell ? Mrs. 
Fairclough’s Cenci-like face did certainly take on 


38 


MISERICORDIA. 


its ordinary low cream-color a deep if swiftly- 
passing crimson, while her manner had the sub- 
tilest possible tinge of embarrassment ; but as 
Noel stood up, he looked only rather paler than 
usual, and was neither embarrassed nor moved in 
any way whatsover. It was an unlucky meeting 
for Millicent’s new-born virtue of repentance and 
desire for general peacefulness ; as damaging as a 
rude touch to a house of cards ; and, as she came 
forward, following her sister, her face, w^hich had 
been prettily caressing, tenderly coaxing, gradu- 
ally flushed into the angry excitement so fatally 
well known ; and the large eyes, which had been 
so full of softened pleading, swept over Noel to 
Mrs. Fairclough with unmistakable disdain, as if 
she would and she could have swept them off 
from the face of the earth. The restless and 
unsteady pendulum of her mind had swung back 
even beyond its former beat ; and, because of that 
short interval of regret, she was even more angry 
Avith Noel and the widow than before. 

Her good intentions were like thistle-down 
blown by the winds. She apologize ? — she humble 
herself to Noel, or speak softly to Mrs. Fairclough ? 
— she write to Frank Hardisty, and tell him not to 
set on foot those inquiries which were to track out 
the snake in the grass and unmask the impostor ? 
No ! she was the injured, not the injurer ; and if 
rejDaration and apology were to be made, they 
were to be made to, and not by, her. 


MISERICORDIA. 


39 


To the courteous speeches of the pretty widow 
she replied with such incivility as could not be 
mistaken or explained ; to Noel’s grave kindness 
she opposed a harsh and jerking feverish kind of 
anger, that seemed as if it could keep no terms 
with appearance — as if it must burst forth or she 
should die. She made herself as disagreeable as 
she knew how ; and, as has been said, she knew 
the art from Alpha to Omega ; while poor Helen 
sat on thorns, and Noel wondered if the visit 
would end without such a fracture as could never 
be mended again. 

Looking from the pouting, flushed, and angry 
face of his affianced bride to the calm and statu- 
esque loveliness of his friend, he thought that^ al- 
though all men are blind where women are con- 
cerned, surely he had been the blindest of all ; 
and that when he had asked Millicent Despard to 
be his wife, he had been struck like Elymas for a 
sin as great as his ! Had he ever been really fas- 
cinated by her? It seemed so strange that he 
had once believed himself sincerely in love, and 
that she would make him a passable wife and an 
endurable life-companion ! Still, he was bound, 
unless she of her own free will released him ; and 
what chance was there of that ? 

He left his place by the table and sat down by 
her, doing his best to bring back her good-humor ; 
but the more he tried to soothe her by his voice, 
his manner, his attentions, the less she would be 


40 


MISERICORDIA. 


mollified. She was full of the perversities of girl- 
hood, in spite of the better characteristics latent 
and to be at some future time developed ; and 
enjoyed the state and dignity of showing temper 
to a man of whom, in the ordinary run of things, 
she was a little afraid. It gave her an artificial 
sense of supremacy which pleased her, and she 
carried her privilege to the last boundary in any j 
way permissible. 

After this kind of thing had gone on for some 
time — an interminable time, as it seemed to all — 
during which Mrs. Sutcliffe had blinked and purred 
and taken in the situation ; Mrs. Fairclough had 
talked to Helen on all manner of gracious noth- 
ings ; and Helen had answered with as much real j 
cordiality and feigned unconcern as her hostess 
had assumed, but always with a consciousness of 
the home reckoning to be made when she and 
Millicent should be alone ; after Noel had first ; 
tried to conciliate Millicent, who would not be I 
conciliated, and then had taken refuge in com- * 
monplaces, to which she had barely deigned a 
reply, thinking them even more heartless and in- 
sulting than the rest — the visit came to an end ; 
and with this ending was born Millicent’s new re- 
solve. The cup was full, and had now run over ; 
and the drops fell like acid on a bond blotting out 
the words “ I promise ” forever. 

She was very quiet and self-centred all the 
way home, thereby upsetting Helen’s calculations 


MISERICORDIA. 


41 


and making her really frightened ; for she knew 
that more danger hid in this brooding quietness 
of wi*ath than in the most ferocious outbursts of 
temper with such a girl as Millicent. It was not 
like her to be amiably savage ; and she was amia- 
ble now, though decidedly savage. Who could 
look into her face, overshadowed with that moral 
thunder-cloud, and not see the truth of things? 
Who, indeed? Not Helen, whose instinct of dan- 
ger was only too true. For, as soon as they got 
home, Millicent went to her own room, and there 
wrote her last and final words to Noel. She meant 
to say just a few — short, sharp, and to the pur- 
pose ; but the curse of verbal fluidity was on her, 
as on some other women, and she never knew 
when to stop. 

Dear Mr. Thorburn,” she said ; and she 
spoiled two sheets of paper before she finally set- 
tled on this as her mode of address, being torn 
first between ‘^Dear Sir,” and “Dear Noel,” then 
between “ Sir,” and nothing at all ; but finally 
fixing on “Dear Mr. Thorburn,” as the coldest 
and most estranged, because least exaggerated and 
most conventional. 

“ Dear Me. Thorburn : After what I have seen 
and felt to-day, I desire that our engagement 
should be brought to an end. I no longer hold 
myself engaged to you, nor you in any way bound 
to me ; and henceforth you are free to carry 
your attentions where you like. I shall tell papa. 


42 


MISERICORDIA. 


and Helen, and everybody, that I have broken off 
with you, and I shall tell them all why ; for you 
have treated me with unheard-of insult and cruel- , 
ty, and if you think that I am the kind of girl to 
accept quietly whatsoever kind of treatment any 
one chooses to give me, you are very much mis- 
taken. I hope that I have too much pride to stoop 
to the degrading position that you want to put i 
me in ; and if you do not love me, at least you i 
shall respect me. You have thrown away a faith- j 
ful heart, and one that would have loved you all ' 
your life ; and some day, perhaps, you will find 
out the mistake you have made, and be sorry for 
it. I wish you no other ill than this, but I think ^ 
you will have this. Yours sincerely, Millicent ■ 
Despard,” in a very bold, big, clumsy hand. li 

So that bubble collapsed, and left only a tear { 
behind it ; and henceforth IN’oel Thorburn and i 
Millicent Despard were two, and the misfit- j 
ting relations between them were at an end for- 
ever.” 

When Noel got home, he received both these 
letters from his fiery, impulsive fiancee^ written 
within two hours of each other — the one from the 
torrid the other from the frozen zone ; and after 
a natural flush of wounded pride at being so de- 
cisively thrown off by the girl whose love for him 
had been her strongest hold over him and his half- 
unconscious source of pride, he turned to his lib- 
erty with a sign of relief — free now to love where 


MISERICORDIA. 


43 


his soul had found its mate, his happiness its 
home. 

Meanwhile Millicent, who would have been 
far happier had she never been taught to write, 
scrawled off another letter to Frank Hardisty, 
addressed to the Foreign Office, where he would 
be to-morrow morning. She reminded him of his 
promise to find out all about Mrs. Fairclough — 
that all meaning, of course, something grossly and 
undeniably evil ; and then she told him that she 
had broken off her engagement with Noel Thor- 
burn because of that awfully wicked woman — and 
she wanted him to find out what he had lost, and 
to be sorry that he had deserted her for such a 
horrid creature. It was all the revenge she meant 
to take, and it was quite a lawful one ; and she 
relied on her dear Frank, her kind, good friend, 
who had always treated her well and never gone 
against her, to help her just this once, when she 
would never bother him again. She was very un- 
happy, and he, Frank, could quite understand 
that no girl would like being put in such a posi- 
tion — deserted like this, she so well known as she 
was, for a perfect stranger who might be any- 
thing in the world for what they knew ; and who 
was, she was sure, a horrid vTetch somehow ! 
Then she wound up with a few sweet words to 
Frank on his own account — words which made 
the young fellow’s fair face beam like a god’s, 
and which made him feel willing and strong 


44 


MISERICORDIA. 


enough for any peril, any discomfort, so long as 
he could win her approval or give her pleasure. f 

If women like to make men’s hearts their foot- 
stools, and to be able to treat their puppets with | 
disdain, sure that they will come back to the lure ■ 
so soon as it is thrown out, Millicent Despard ; 
owed no little gratitude to Frank Hardisty for . 
gratifying both these propensities as he did ; for | 
no man was more the slave of a woman’s humor, * 
more like a docile dog bound to fetch and carry ^ 
and obey without a murmur, whatever the com- 
mand, than was he. Not only his cloak, but his . 
very body, he would have laid down before her, 
that she might keep her dainty feet clean and 
dry ; not only the cup of water would he have 
taken from his own parched lips that hers might 
be refreshed, but he would have given her his 
very life-blood, and felt honored that she would 
accept her own well-being at the expense of his 
existence. It was one of those dumb, quiet, in- 
tense loves which go far and last long, but which 
make very little show in life ; and Millicent her- 
self, though she traded on his devotion, did not 
know how deep it went. 

This letter made him very glad, if also sorry : 
glad for himself, that his chance was still alive ; 
but sorry for her, that she had suffered and been 
mortified. He did not believe that she loved Noel 
Thorburn. He could not. Loving her as he did 
for his own part, it seemed impossible to him that 


MISERICORDIA. 


45 


her heart should be given to any one else, though 
she might have given her fancy, and accepted an 
offer which was grateful to her pride and am- 
bition. 

All this poor clumsy-brained Frank was gen- 
erous enough to understand and accept ; but he 
felt as if the magnet of his own love were too 
strong to suffer her heart to be given to another. 
And now it was small wonder and less blame if 
the way suddenly made clearer for his own chance 
gave him happiness, even though she had suffered. 

He relieved his mind, however, by a few harsh 
epithets applied to Noel ; and then he put the 
letter into his pocket, and stumbled through his 
work with even less sharpness than usual, and 
more woolly-headedness than was looked for as of 
the nature of things. 

When his work was done, and the sacred hour 
of four had struck, Frank went off to his club 
and sat down to think. He had this thing to do : 
he had to find out all about Mrs. Fairclough ; 
but how to begin, and where ? A clerkship in the 
Foreign Office does not include intimate relations 
with the ministers and embassadors or even the 
consuls abroad ; and three months’ residence in 
i Italy for the purpose of qualifying himself to pass 
I an examination in the language does not give a 
' man the power of Asmodeus, and take off the 
I roofs of private houses that he may see what is 
going on within. Nor is London exactly the kind 


46 


MISERICORDIA. 


of place where to begin a search into the ante-| 
cedents of an unknown lady lately settled in a* 
country place, and living a quiet life with perfect \ 
propriety. What could he do ? How could he be- 
gin ? IN’o lady of romance ever gave her knight • 
a harder task, and no prince of fairy-tale, who can 
win his bride only by the present of a bottle full of ; 
singing water, or by an amulet from off the brow ; 
of a terrible magician, had a much harder task " 
before him than had Frank Hardisty of the For- 
eign Office, when told to find out all about Mrs. 1 
Fairclough, under pain of Millicent Despard’s ^ 
everlasting displeasure, but with the hope, should ; 
he succeed, of even more than her mere pleasure. ? 

He was sitting there with his head in his hand, ^ 
when George Gabriel came up, and with him a | 
dark, handsome, well-dressed man with a ribbon ? 
in his button-hole, and a general look of seeing life | 
and enjoying himself regardless of expense and | 
consequences. He was introduced to Frank as il ^ 
Marchese Salvatore Capozzi, lately come to Eng- 
land from Naples ; ” and Frank, who had had a i 
good time ” in that bright city, was glad both ? 
to brush up his acquaintance with the old issimos ) 
and conjunctives, though the marchese spoke i 
English perfectly, and to ask questions about the 
Chiaia and the Museum, Posilippo and the Toledo, 
as if great cities had a trick of dissolving into thin 
air, and principal streets were taken down and re- 
built like so many toy houses of Nuremberg. 


MISERICORDIA. 


47 


He found the Italian a very pleasant, easy-go- 
ing kind of person, with that wonderful grace of 
manner and natural ease characteristic of the whole 
nation, but especially of the south ; and he found, 
too, that other characteristic — the assumption of 
ingenuous simplicity and spontaneity which masks 
the sharpest intellect and the most acute suspicion 
of any people in the world. But the mask was 
wonderfully well made, and fitted close ; and 
Frank, who never saw deeper into the mile-stone 
before him than the surface-polish and the en- 
graved letters, accepted George Gabriel’s friend 
as he had long ago accepted George himself, and 
before half an hour had passed was ready to swear 
to his good qualities all tied together in a bunch 
like so many love-apples. 

After a little time spent in making the first ap- 
proaches, when the Italian had measured Frank 
and Frank had not so much as verified one inch 
of the Italian, the three young men went off to 
Greenwich to dine ; as a thing to be done for the 
amusement and edification of a benighted foreigner 
who has nothing but the sun and sky, a few com- 
mon kinds of fruits, and a lot of doubtful vegeta- 
bles for his portion ; while we English, salt of the 
earth as we are in ourselves, have the supreme of 
everything — ^from coal-mines to peaches, and from 
manufactures to whitebait. 

The three young men talked and laughed and 
enjoyed themselves after the manner of young 


48 


MISERICORDIA. 


men with money to spend, and the high spirits of ^ 
both youth and health to make the method of ' 
spending it pleasant. And then Frank remem- f, 
bered Mrs. Fairclough and Millicent’s letter, with ; 
its desire. 

He asked the new acquaintance, this Marchese ' 
Capozzi, of Naples, if he had ever met a Mrs. Fair- 
clough in Italy — the country being small and ev- 
erybody knowing everybody, whether the one lives 
in Milan and the other at Palermo, as if both were 
mixed up together in the same circle of the same ' 
town ; just as everybody is assumed to know every- 
body in India, sinking the Presidencies ; and as , 
North and South Australia are interchangeable 
terms, like adjacent parishes within a morning’s 
walk of each other. 

‘^Mrs. Fairclough?” ari^swered the Italian. 
‘^No. Who is she? What of her? Where did j 
she live ? What is she like ? ” rapidly. j 

She is a very beautiful woman, if that is any ^ 
guide,” laughed Frank, a little ashamed of his • 
vagueness ; for when he came to dredge and | 
plumb, what did he know of this lovely lady who 
had suddenly come to M^rston ? Absolutely noth- . 
ing ; and he had no indications to give whereby ■ 
she might be traced. “ I know no more than this,” 
he continued : she is a Mrs. Fairclough, an 

Englishwoman, who has lived, I think, all her life 
abroad ; a widow with no children — and that is; 
all.” 


MISERICORDIA. 


49 


No, I do not know the name at all,” answered 
Capozzi ; hut if she is beautiful she can be easily 
traced, for she must have been well known in Italy, 
wherever she has lived. We are not so indifferent 
to beauty as report says you Englishmen are,” 
laughing in his turn, and showing a whole row of 
small scjuare teeth and the most good-tempered 
mouth in the world. The eyes, though, were sharp- 
er. What is she like ? ” 

“Tall, fair, with golden-brown hair — a very 
lovely creature indeed.” 

“ The description is too general. It would do 
for half the English signorine who come to Italy. 
They are all tall, fair, and with golden-brown hair. 
A dark beauty is an anomaly among them, and cre- 
ates unheard-of enthusiasm.” 

“Well, I can toll you nothing more,” said 
Frank ; then musing, he added, after a moment’s 
pause : “ Oh ! I tell you what she is like — the 
Cenci, in the Barberini Palace, at Rome.” 

“ Fairclough ? Fairclough ? ” said Salvatore, 
lowering his eyes. “No, I do not know her ; but 
I remember an Englishwoman in Italy who was ex- 
actly like the Cenci ; only ” — raising his eyes with 
a sudden, sharp look that shot like a flame, while 
he laughed again, and showed all his teeth beneath 
his full, flexible, pleasure-loving lips — “her name 
was not Fairclough.” 


4 


50 


MISERICORDIA. 


IV. I 

Frank Hardisty found the Marchese Capoz- ] 
zi, or Salvatore, as he affectionately desired to he .• 
called, the most charming companion in the world. > 
Without being in any way servile, he Avas always 
gracious, good-humored, and complaisant ; pleased ] 
with everything, and accepting life as he found it I 
in London without a murmur. \ 

To be sure, he AAwe a heavy, fur-lined cloak, I 
though it was August, and laughed at the pretense 
of an English sun, which he said was neither so | 
bright nor so warm as the Italian moon ; to be I 
sure, too, he made wry faces over the peaches, | 
which he swore tasted of smoke and the stove ; » 
but as he was perfectly sweet-tempered with it | 
all, and young men do not resent chaff Avhen ac- I 
companied by exuberant spirits, abundant laugh- | 
ter, and all manner of graceful excuses which dis- < 
arm national self-love and do not rouse personal i 
contempt, these little discrepancies of sentiment | 
passed smoothly enough, and Frank bore with Sal- I 
vatore’s “ scherzi ” as he with Frank’s chaff, and ^ 
were none the less friends in consequence. | 

Not a day passed that the young men did not ' 
meet, with or without George Gabriel, the orig- 
inal introducer, but noAV left far behind in the 
running made so briskly by these other two ; and 
in a very short time Frank had laid bare the whole 


MISERICORDIA. 


51 


position of affairs at Marston, and made the Ital- 
ian as much master of the details as he was him- 
self. The young Norse-god was hut a poor imi- 
tator of Loki, and as little a disciple of Macchi- 
avelli ; and to set him to manage a delicate hit of 
diplomacy was about as harmonious an assignment 
of functions as to embroider a dainty fabric with 
cart-ropes. 

The Italian, astute of intellect, frank and ingen- 
uous of manner, wound the Foreign Office clerk 
round his little finger, and pumped him dry before 
the young fellow knew where he was. He got the 
whole map of the country from beginning to end, 
and understood exactly how things were. 

A beautiful widow, of unimpeachable conduct 
and unknown antecedents, by name Fairclough, 
settled in a quiet country place, with a companion 
engaged in London, and knowing nothing more of 
her employer than the people did of their neigh- 
bor ; been there some six months ; had lived much, 
nay, all her life, abroad ; had been married abroad 
— to Mr. Fairclough — also of unknown family, 
profession, social status, personal history ; had 
lost her husband and her parents, let us suppose 
by Roman fever — that does as well for a supposi- 
tion as anything else — and this also abroad ; was 
beautiful and like the Cenci ; had fascinated the 
great prize of the place, who, indeed, would have 
been a very fair prize in the matrimonial market 
anywhere, and who, for her sake, had deserted his 


52 


MISERICORDIA. 


own lawful love and broken off his engagement — • 
though this last fact did not specially trouble^ 
Frank Hardisty, if it angered him for the young ' 
lady’s sake, and as a slight cast on one whom gods 
might have been proud to own — as the marchesc 
soon found out. The question now remaining 
was, Would Mr. Noel Thorburn marry the wid- 
ow ? — if so, when ? — and who was she ? 

All this was got from the handsome, good-na- 
tured, blundering lad, with his thick wits and hon- 
est intentions, without the least trouble or sus- 
picion ; and as Salvatore promised to lend his aid 
in finding out all about the widow, to whom he 
said he thought he had a clew, Frank congratu- 
lated himself on his good fortune, and held that 
he had done a good day’s work when he had fallen 
in with the Marchese Capozzi and made him his , 
friend and confidant. 

Not that he liked the thought of being the, 
means, at first hand or second, of injuring Mrs.! 
Fairclough. Quite the contrary. Had there been ; ! 
no Millicent Despard, it is more than likely tliati^ 
he would have carried his honest homage to thet; 
Cottage as faithfully as he now carried it to| 
Oak-Tree House. But Millicent was supreme, as 
things stood, with him and Ids heart ; and if slie 
desired him to beat out the snakes from the grass 
where she swore she heard them rustle, or un- 
earth the tigers from the jungle where she was 
sure she saw their eyes glaring through the break 


MISERICORDIA. 


53 


in the brushwood, why he, Frank Hardisty, her 
slave and dog, was bound to obey her at any cost, 
how much soever he might pity the poor snake 
which Avas not venomous, or believe that the 
deadly tiger was nothing but a harmless little 
kitten. 

And, after all, it would not be his fault if the 
stranger’s history turned out shaky at the corners. 
Not that it would — he felt sure of that — and took 
comfort from the thought that Mrs. Fairclough 
was straight and on the square throughout — a 
“Candida columba” whose unsullied whiteness 
inquiry could only make more manifest. He Avas 
sure of it, he said to himself again and again ; 
but even if a miracle should be wrought, and the 
dove of silver-seeming prove to be only a crow ar- 
tificially whitened when all was known, even then 
it might be his sorrow to have been made the 
instrument of detection, but it would not be his 
crime ; and the neighborhood ought to be pro- 
tected and Millicent avenged. 

All the same he felt as if he had committed 
himself to some dark and dangerous course 
whereof he kneAV neither the issue nor the rela- 
tions — as if he had taken an oath and signed 
away his liberty to some secret society, where he 
would be swept away into murder and rebellion 
at the will of the members, and find his name 
gibbeted with criminals before he knew where he 
was — when the marchese, looking mysterious and 


54 


MISERICORDIA. 


confidential, told him that he had placed the 
whole thing in the hands of one of the secret 
police whom he happened to meet here in Lon- 
don, and that he would soon lay the threads of 
what he believed would prove to be a diabolical 
plot between the fingers of his good friend, his 
caro Francesco. He had a lead, he said, which 
only wanted following up to make it clear, sup- 
posing his hypothesis as to the true personality 
and real history of the widow should prove to be > 
correct. When he said this, Frank had that ; 
sudden sickness at his heart which every one feels 1 
who has taken the first downward and irretriev- J 
able step on the road of evil to himself and 
wrong-doing to others. 

Soon after this the Italian left London, writing 
a short note to Frank, in which he said that he 
had gone down to Liverpool on business connected 
with the shipping interests of Naples, and that he 
should not be in town again for a few days. 
When he returned, he would see his caro Fran- 
cesco without loss of time, and by then should 
have something definite to tell him of the Fair 
Mystery. He expected letters from Italy which 
would quash or confirm the hypothesis of which 
he had spoken before, and matters would then be 
so far advanced, so far cleared, that it would be 
one thing or the other — yes or no. Either she 
was the person whom he believed her to be, or 
else she was some one quite different ; and to 


MISERICORDIA. 


55 


clear the ground, even by a negative, was so much 
• gained. 

With this letter Frank was fain to be content; 
but he wrote to Millicent, and told her that he had 
a friend who thought he knew all about Mrs. Fair- 
clough, and that in a few days he hoped to send 
her a biography, written on official paper, and duly 
stamped and sealed. 

^^And then I shall be revenged,” said Milli- 
cent, viciously; ‘^and Noel will be ashamed of 
himself.” 

Perhaps not,” answered Helen, gravely. 
“ You know nothing whatever against this poor 
creature; and, even if there is anything against 
her, have you done a womanly thing, Milly, in 
setting Frank Hardisty, and perhaps the police, 
at work to hunt her down when she thinks that 
she is safe ? I wish you had left it alone ! ” 

And let her marry NoelThorburn ? — let him 
bring a horrid creature here into the midst of our 
society, and we obliged to meet her at dinners 
and everything ? I wonder at you, Helen ! I 
should have thought you had better principles ! ” 
cried Millicent, virtuously indignant. 

I have the best of all,” answered her sister. 

Let well alone, and do not meddle with things 
which don’t belong to you.” 

But they do belong to me,” said Millicent, 
passionately. Noel’s shameful treatment of me, 
I suppose, counts for something ? — or do you 


56 


MISERICORDIA. 


think him such a superior person, and Mrs. Fair- 
clough such an angel, that they may behave as 
they like, and I without the right even to com- 
plain?” 

“ I think my little sister a great goose,” said I 
Helen, serenely ; which you will say is no news.” < 

“No,” said Millicent, bursting into fiery tears; j 
“ you have always hated and despised me, Helen, i 
and no one in the world cares for me, except poor ’{■ 
Frank.” | 

“ Which last speech justifies my opinion, my j 
dear,” replied Helen ; and, on this, peace was an | 
unknown quantity between the sisters for the next 
hour and a half by the clock. ] 

It was about this time that a strange adventure j 
befell Mrs. Sutcliffe — at least, it passed for an ad- j 
venture in a country place where a brood of chick- j 
ens was an event that made its mark on the day’s Sj 
chronicles, and the presence of a camp of gypsies 
in the lane a circumstance as terrifying to the 
nerves of the ladies as if a troop of Cossacks or f. 
Bashi-Bazouks had been reported marauding i] 
through the land. The adventure was a man- I 
dolin-player — a handsome, clean, swarthy, well- g 
dressed mandolin-player, in a slouched soft-felt hat | 
with a peacock’s feather stuck in the side, and his | 
trim, well-built figure, clothed in dark-green vel- 
veteen, covered by a large, loose, fur-lined cloak. 

He certainly was a very striking and superior- 
looking person for an “ itinerant musician ; ” and 


MISERICORDIA. 


57 


Mrs. Sutcliffe, a fair, fat, florid woman, who had 
once been pretty, wondered if a romance were pos- 
sibly behind his spacious cloak, and if — she scarce- 
ly knew what ; but her thoughts wove themselves 
into a confused pattern of conjecture and possi- 
bility, and troublesome little secrets of her present 
employer’s past life cropping up like weeds which 
a gardener has only cut down and covered up, not 
destroyed ; so that she was prepared for anything, 
as she said afterward, divinely and supernaturally 
illumined as to the fact that there was something 
for which to be prepared. 

The man with the mandolin stopped and spoke 
to this fair, fat, florid lady, walking slowly down 
the lane. He knew a little English, he said, and 
spoke well what he did know, as if he kne w it better 
than he allowed. At all events, it was enough for 
a conversation that did not touch on ethics or lit- 
erature, and that was bounded by a few elementary 
questions and almost monosyllabic answers. Mrs. 
Sutcliffe offered him a penny, and he took it with 
a gracious smile and a low bow, as he removed his 
crushed felt hat and showed a handsome black 
and curly head — more like a gentleman’s well-or- 
dered curls than a strolling mandolin-player’s un- 
kempt locks ; and then he asked her about the 
country, for he had lost himself, he said, and 
wanted to get to London — from which great cen- 
tre he was full a hundred miles out of the direct 
line altogether. He said, too, that he had heard 


58 


MISERICORDIA. 


of a good lady who lived somewhere about here, 
and who had been in his o^vn country ; and as he 
wanted some one to write home for him to his 
mother, he would be so glad to find her ! 

Mrs. Sutcliffe made for answer — meeting those 
clear and glittering eyes, looking so sharply into ^ 
hers, with that sleepy, blinking, half -shut glance 
which made her look as if she hardly understood I 
what was said, and saw no farther than a hand- ^ 
breadth before her — that she was sure the good 
lady in question would do her best to help a coun- 
tryman ; and then she told the man to go up the ' 
road and turn to the right, when he would come ' 
to a house grown over with ivy, when he was to 
stop and ask to see Mrs. Fairclough. 

Mrs. Fairclough ! ” he answered, pronouncing 
the name with commendable facility, seeing that 
this must have been the first time of hearing or 
speaking it, and our English words not being es- 
pecially easy to the soft Italian mouth. Will ; 
she write for me to mamma ? ” 

“Yes, I am sure she will,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. 

“ She is a very kind lady, and you are next to be- 
ing her countryman.” 

“Not Italian ? ” ' 

“ No — almost, not quite.” 

“ Grazie ! I will come,” said the Italian, brisk- | 
ly ; and just then Mrs. Fairclough and Noel Thor- i 
burn passed the head of the lane, returning home f 
from their ride. » 


MISERIOORDIA. 


59 


The mandolin-player looked up from under his 
broad-leafed hat, and gazed at them narrowly. 
He laughed as they passed — a soft, musical laugh, 
that somehow had an echo not quite so musical as 
itself. Mrs. Sutcliffe winked her fat eyelids, and 
put on an expression of surprise. 

Ah ! ” he said, joyously ; “ I laughed because 
I could see that beautiful lady had been in my 
country.” 

It was rather far off to see that,” said Mrs. 
Sutcliffe, “unless you had known her before- 
hand.” 

“ The heart speaks when the eyes are blind,” 
said the Italian, laying his hand on his heart ; and 
Mrs. Sutcliffe was more than ever convinced that 
she had come upon the trail of a mystery and an 
adventure, and that this well-dressed mandolin- 
player with the white hands and well-brushed hair 
was a somebody — Heaven alone knew who — in 
disguise, and that his coming would spring a mine 
at the feet of Mrs. Fairclough— whether for good 
or evil remained to be seen. It could be of no 
evil to herself — Mrs. Emma Sutcliffe — personally, 
which was the main consideration with her at 
all times. The young widow must have a com- 
panion, whatever happened outside marriage ; 
which, as things were, was not very likely, for 
Noel was engaged, and no one else was in the 
lists — and she would never meet with one more 
fitted to the situation, and less likely to bore 


60 


MISERICORDIA. 


her or give her offense, than the one whom she 
had now. 

Of that I am sure,” thought Mrs. Sutcliffe, 
complacently, feeling that she had in her pocket 
the exact measure of Mrs. Fairclough’s foot, and 
knew to a nicety the touch required on the leading 
rein. 

Still, this man might be troublesome, she 
thought again ; though, to be sure, he might be 
only an adventurer — or a revelation : in which 
case that measure would fit more exactly than be- 
fore, the touch on the leading rein would be firmer, 
and her own position would be consolidated in 
proportion to the discovery of shaky corners and 
loose ends in the widow’s past history. For the 
sleepy-eyed companion was a woman who had 
knocked about the world so long that she had 
knocked off all repugnance to evil, whatsoever it 
might be, only regarding it as a circumstance 
which told for the discoverer and against the doer, 
like a false move in chess or the wrong suit dis- 
carded. 

With which thoughts and speculations she 
amused herself till she came to the house whither 
she was bound, carrying some toothsome contri- 
butions from the Cottage larder to an invalid, and 
receiving as her own the thanks which, had helj) 
to the poor been left to her to give, would have 
had scant cause to be said. 

It was rather late when the companion got 


MISERICORDIA. 


61 


home. Mrs. Fairclougli was already dressing for 
dinner, and Mrs. Sutcliffe had only just time 
enough to make her own toilet before the five 
minutes’ bell rang, when she was expected to be 
at her post in the drawing-room — at all events, 
when visitors were dining here. And a visitor 
was dining at the Cottage this evening — Mr. ^^oel 
Thorburn, who had returned with the widow, and 
staid, partly because of a piteous story which 
he had made up about his kitchen range, which 
he seemed to think was the same thing as the 
kitchen chimney, and which had a complication 
of misfortunes that made a rational dinner an im- 
possibility, and the Christian virtue of hospitality 
and giving to eat a necessity — from some one. 
And as Noel let the widow plainly understand 
that he expected this Christian virtue at her hands, 
and as she believed in fate, she had taken the hint, 
and invited him ; and he had accepted the invita- 
tion, and come. 

He had something to say to this beautiful and 
bewitching likeness of the Cenci, which must be 
said soon, or life would become too difficult to him. 
It could not be said on horseback, and — the Au- 
gust evenings were sweet and soft and odorous. 
He was sorry for Millicent, of course ; but he had 
no desire to go back on that mistake, and he had 
a new path to follow. Of her own free will the 
girl had released him ; and he had accepted her 
surrender with even more gratitude than her ac- 


62 


MISERICORDIA. 


ceptance of his offer had given him pleasure. It 
had been a mistake ; he saw that now ; and now 
he wanted to forget that he had ever made it, as 
well as all the pain and confusion and disturbance 
which it had caused him. 

Thus it was impossible for Mrs. Sutcliffe to 
tell her employer anything of the adventure which 
had befallen her before the meal, and it was a 
honne houche during it which she thought should 
not be lost. 

“ You are going to have a visit, my dear,” she 
said to Mrs. Fairclough, with a broad smile. 

She was one of those fat, comfortable souls 
who say ‘‘my dear” easily, and always to the 
young. It was her manner of purring. 

“ Am I ? ” said Mrs. Fairclough. “ From 
whom ? ” 

“ That is more than I can tell you,” answered 
Mrs. Sutcliffe, still smiling ; “ but he is a country- 
man of yours, who wants you to write a letter to 
his mother. So strange to be so ignorant, you 
know ! ” 

“ How — a countryman ? Is he an Englishman ? ” 
asked the widow, looking at her companion with 
her full, steady gaze. Of late she had begun to 
question the true ring of that fat, blinking, com- 
fortable soul. 

“No — an Italian,” she answered, her face ex- 
pressing surprise at the doubt. 

“ But I am not an Italian,” returned Mrs. Fair- 


MISERICORDIA. 


63 


dough, gravely. “ I have been a great deal abroad, 
but I pride myself on being an Englishwoman. 
Certainly, I am not an Italian ! ” 

She looked involuntarily at Noel when she said 
this, and Noel looked at her and smiled. He liked 
both the repudiation and the assertion. 

But who is this stranger ? ” asked Mrs. Fair- 
dough, after a short pause. “Where have you 
seen him, and what do you know of him ? ” 

“ I met him in the lane,” said Mrs. Sutdiffe, 
drinking her wine and looking at the widow. 
“Well — and then ? What does it all mean ? ” 
“That is more than I can say. All that I 
know is, he is a remarkably handsome man, so 
dean and well dressed, and just like a gentleman, 
my dear ! — with hands and nails and shirt-cuffs 
like a prince ! He asked me if you did not live 
somewhere near here — ” 

“ I ? ” interrupted Mrs. Fairclough, who had 
grown deadly, strangely pale. “ Did he know 
me ? — know me by name ? ” 

“ Yes,” answered Mrs. Sutcliffe, shooting wide 
of the literal truth ; “ he knew your name, and 
asked for you by it.” 

Mrs. Fairclough said nothing, but she pushed 
away her plate with the food untasted, and for 
the moment swayed in her chair as if she would 
have fallen. 

“ It was the oddest thing in the world,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Sutcliffe. “ He was a guitar-player. 


64 


MISERICORDIA. 


or something like a guitar — not quite; and should . 
have been a beggar, of course. I gave him a ; 
penny, and he took it, which looks like being a ' 
beggar, does it not ? But I assure you he has the 
manners of a duke, and he speaks as well as I do.” • 
I dare say a man would have formed a differ- j 
ent opinion,” said Noel, a little grimly ; “ but it C 
takes a man to judge these foreign mountebanks 
at their proper value. Women are so easily 
caught ! ” I 

“Well, if he comes when you are here, Mr. ; 
Thorburn, you will see that what I have said is 
true,” returned Mrs. Sutcliffe, nettled. “ That • 
man is not a common beggar, I assure you, though j 
he did take my penny, and does not know how to ? 
read and write.” r 

“ When is he coming ? ” asked Mrs. Fairclough, '< 
who had a little recovered herself. j 

“ He did not say ; but he said that he wanted /; 
you to write a letter to his mother — he called her 
mamma, so funny ! just like a baby — and he had 
heard that you were an Italian, and so I suppose 
he thought you would help a fellow-countryman i 

in distress.” f 

“ Poor fellow ! I am sure I will do such a | 
thing as that for him willingly,” said Mrs. Fair- | 
dough, with as much of her natural manner as I 
she could assume. “ So few of the lower classes I 
can write,” she added, turning to Noel. “ Don’t | 
you remember the public letter-writers in Naples ? ” I 


MISERICORDIA. 


65 


Yes ; but do not let this fellow bother you, 
or fasten himself on you in any way,” said Noel, 
a little anxiously. 

What a dreadful thing it was to him to think 
of this woman living here at the Cottage so un- 
protected, so helpless, should difficulties or dangers 
arise ! How he wished that he could take her 
away that very evening to the Hall, where she 
might be shielded from all peril, kept safe from 
all trials, sheltered, honored, protected by the 
faithful love of an honest Englishman — as Noel 
Thorburn thought, the only man in the world 
who knows how to love ! 

No ! ” said Mrs. Fairclough, who by now had 
grown tranquil and her sweetest self again. If 
he is troublesome, I will send for you,” smiling. 

Do,” said Noel, enchanted, his face taking 
on itself an expression which made Mrs. Sutcliffe 
wonder if Millicent Despard would ever be Mrs. 
Noel Thorburn after all, she not having heard of 
the rupture ; consequently, having no special 
cause to fear Noel more to-night than yesterday 
— and, indeed, as she tried to believe, having no 
special cause to fear him at all. 

For a widow may have a pleasant friend in an 
engaged man without any ulterior object or possi- 
ble change of circumstances, thought Mrs. Sut- 
cliffe to herself, preaching peace, and trying to 
forget thaUsudden radiance which was like the 
momentary lifting of a veil. 

5 


66 


MISERICORDIA. 


V. 

Years ago, in the Bay of Naples, under the 
tender-leaved vines and the orange-trees in their 
last days of flowering ; on a soft moonlight even- 
ing, when just beginning to be warm enough to ( 
sit out on the loggia or in the trellised arbor at 
the end of the columned wall in the garden ; be- . 
fore her Vesuvius, with his ruddy banner stream- : 
ing against the starry sky ; to the side Naples 
lying low on the shore, with its countless lights ^ 
glittering as if it were some great jewel banding 
the line of the sea ; the terraced hills of Vico, . 
with their little points of light among the trees ■ 
where the cottagers were still at their work ; the ; 
fire-flies flitting through the garden, and filling the ^ 
gorge with fantastic sprays and cascades of light , 
— how well she remembered it all, so long ago as > 
it was ! — such a lifetime as it was that stretched 
between now and then ! — what she was now, and 
what she had been then ! 

She was walking in the garden by her mother’s ^ 
side, clinging to her with a happy girl’s shy joy ; | 
while on her other side walked the dark-haired, ^ 
handsome young fellow to whom she had been | 
that day formally betrothed, and who thus had ; 
won the liberties of a lover so far that he might ■ 
look into her face with as little fear of detection , 
as of rebuke ; lower his voice when he spoke to 


MISERICOKDIA. 


67 


her ; hold her hand for a moment warmly pressed 
when he came and when he went ; show his love 
and speak of it as openly as any man could, when 
in the presence of a third — and that third a mother. 

And to a girl, English though she was, but 
brought up as she had been under the strict 
regime of foreign manners, this was enough. 
More would have frightened and repelled her. 

It was a love-match on either side, but love 
cemented by prudence and approved of by au- 
thority. Both had money ; they were equal in 
social position ; their ages were in accord, and 
for once the course of true love ran smooth. The 
young people started in life with the fairest out- 
look that beauty, well-being, mutual affection, un- 
troubled circumstances, could give them. The 
*only possible chance of danger was in their youth ; 
for a young man of twenty-one has his character 
to make and his dangers to run ; and there may 
be times and occasions when, as the guide and 
guardian of a girl of seventeen, his own want of 
experience would tell against him ; and there may 
be others where his want of fixed principles and 
consolidated character would tell yet more against 
her. But youth is a fault which cures itself daily ; 
and in this case it was a danger which the mother, 
in bad health, knowing that she could not live, 
and anxious to see her daughter settled and with 
a natural protector before she died, determined to 
run. So the engagement was made, and the boy 


68 


MISERICORDIA. 


and girl were formally betrothed, as has been 
said. 

Yes, how well she remembered that evening ! ' 
How the scent of the orange-blossoms haunted 
her ! how every circumstance and incident of the 
scene was photographed on her memory ! Nature 
her very self had put on a new face, and given a ' 
new revelation because of the words spoken in the 
tapestried drawing-room that morning ; when the 
sweet spring perfumes flowing in on the soft air, 
and the view from the windows, now to the sea, 
now to the hills, seemed fuller of meaning and 
beauty than she had ever known in them before. 
She was young then — only seventeen ; absolutely 
innocent of evil ; knowing nothing of all that 
makes life such a tragedy to the older and more 
experienced ; happy because without regret for 
yesterday or fear for to-morrow ; trustful because 
not knowing that being and seeming can be differ- 
ent ; a kind of nineteenth-century Galatea, mov- 
ing in her wonderful grace and purity as in an 
atmosphere apart, and looking as if she must ' 
needs be always happy because always pure and 
innocent and loving. 

But more than those thirteen years lay be- 
tween the peaceful, radiant girl of seventeen who 
walked by her mother’s side that lovely night of 
late April, looking at the stars that shone above 
and the lights that glittered round the Bay of Na- 
ples — and, as she looked, opening her heart to the ii 


MISERICORDIA. 


69 


first breath of love — and this sad, quiet, fair-faced 
woman of thirty, who sat now in her pretty Eng- 
lish home, believing in fate and skeptical as to vir- 
tue ; with again by her side one who loved her and 
whom she loved, and again a crisis of her fate at 
hand. 

This time things and feelings were different 
from what they had been. Faith and trust for 
the world at large she had none, but for Noel 
himself she had a girl’s passionate belief and re- 
spect ; belief in a high moral standard as endeavor 
to live up to a noble ideal had equally left her ; 
and she had become a dreamer and a fatalist, let- 
ting things unpleasant slide where they could, and 
things dangerous drift where they would. It 
seemed as if she had exhausted her energy of ac- 
tion in that one determined and most desperate 
step which had landed her here ; and that, since 
then, she had let herself be carried along by the 
current, shutting her eyes to the outfall and her 
ears to the noise of the rapids ahead. She had 
known sorrow and learned evil ; and sometimes, 
in willful revenge for what she had suffered, she 
made others suffer, too ; and sometimes, for very 
weariness, she had shut her eyes, as had been said, 
and let the tide of events carry her where it would. 
And when it had carried her to the ruin of an hon- 
est man’s life, then she had covered her fair face 
in her hands, shed tears, and repented. But she 
went on again as before, till again the catastrophe 


70 


MISERTCORDIA. 


came, when she had to stand still, see her bad 
day’s work, and be sorry for it in vain. 

She was shutting her eyes and letting herself 
drift now. She had not dared to ask herself until 
to-day what was the meaning of this friendship 
between her and Noel Thorburn ; why he should 
come to her as he did, day after day, and find his 
sole pleasure in her society ; and why she should 
live only when he was there, merely vegetate when 
he was not. What was it — love or friendship ? 
She had not dared to ask herself this question 
clearly ; when, if she had, she would have lied to 
her own soul, and would have answered. Friend- 
ship ; keeping her eyes still sealed under their 
self-imposed load of sweet deception. 

Yes, he was her friend. “ Cannot a woman have 
a friend, without all these foolish fancies of love ? ” 
she would have asked, and been indignant had any 
one taxed her with her state. Why must fools 
always interpret, and interpret wrongly? Love 
^ comes only once in a life, but friendship blossoms 
afresh continually, and no pruning kills that plant 
as it kills love. She had loved once in her life ; 
had lived all that could be lived for the one ; and 
now she was free to cultivate the other, and to 
take all of it that came in her way. Besides, Noel 
Thorburn was engaged ; and to her an engagement 
was as binding as the marriage itself. No, certain- 
ly she was not in love, and no one had the right 
to suspect, and still less to say so. And with this 


MISERICORDIA. 


71 


she had contented herself in those rare moments 
when she ceased to dream and forgot to he a fa- 
talist. 

To-day, however, for the first time, Mrs. Fair- 
clough felt afraid of herself, of ISToel, of the situa- 
tion altogether. His manner had changed. A sub- 
tile, undefinable air of freedom to seek, of liberty 
to sue, had taken possession of him, where for- 
merly had been the strictest reticence, the most en- 
tire absence of personal intention. His eyes rested 
on her lovingly, as they had never rested before, 
much as he had studied her face, so that he had 
learned by heart every line and tint and varying ex- 
pression ; where the heavy shadows were cast by 
the wavy masses of her auburn hair, and where 
the feathery little rings and downy ripples were 
like washes of pure gold against the reddened ripe- 
ness of the rest ; he knew every trick of her eyes, 
when they looked without seeing while her mind 
was far away, living over again that backward 
past, and when they saw without seeming to look ; 
every quiver of her mouth was as eloquent to him 
as words ; and her every gesture, every action, 
every accent, had its own interpretation set against 
it in the vocabulary of his heart. He had studied 
until he could read her through and through ; un- 
derstanding the almost dangerous strength of char- 
acter and resoluteness of will lying like a fine steel 
line beneath that sweet Italian indolence, that gra- 
cious, drifting, careless kind of good-nature which 


72 


MISERICORDIA. 


found ojDposition too difficult, and — was it worth 
the trouble ? 

The question would soon be answered if she ' 
found anything that was worth the trouble. Noel 
understood this ; and the contradiction lying in 
the possibilities of her character, and its daily 
habits, was among the greatest of the charms that ' 
she possessed for him. Given the circumstance, 
and she would be a heroine. He forgot to add. 
Given the circumstance, and she might also be a 
criminal. 

A feeling of pity for Millicent, in whose absorb- 
ing if childish, real if uncomfortable love for him • 
he believed as men naturally do believe in the love 
of impulsive women, had kept Noel silent to Mrs. 
Fairclough on the history of his broken engage- 
ment ; and as the widow was not on intimate 
terms with any one in the neighborhood, and not 
a gossip with those whom she did know, she had 
not heard of it from any side quarter. For which 
reason this subtile and undefinable change in Noel’s 
manner, if it pleased her, also troubled her ; for i 
what did it mean ? In the circumstances of his 
life it must not mean love ; but if it should ? — if 
that marriage was broken off, and Noel set free 
to seek? Well, if so, there would be only one 
heart-break the more — and the world is so full 
of them ! 

They were sitting now by the open French 
window that gave on to the lawn. It was a moon- 


MISERICORDIA. 


73 


less night, but the sky was full of stars ; and as 
the fair-faced woman, cast back in her indolent 
grace in the low, deep chair, looked up to the heav- 
ens above, she saw the bright north-star, and the 
grand sweep of the constellation which points it 
out, just as she had seen it on that evening, thir- 
teen years ago now, and more. 

For the Italian loggia, with its passionate asso- 
ciations and poetic memories, was the quiet Eng- 
lish drawing-room, with its sense of peace and 
sentiment of home ; for the vines and orange- 
blossoms, the fresh smell of mossy turf, of pines 
and fir-trees, and sweet English garden-flowers ; 
for Vesuvius, the terraced hills of Vico, and the 
blue Bay of Naples like a jewel set against the 
sea, the soft and homely Surrey hills, and the 
sandy common glowing with golden gorse and 
purple heather in between. By her side sat Noel 
Thorburn, speaking low, as that other had spoken ; 
and in the far distance Mrs. Sutcliffe completed 
the analogy of circumstance as representing that 
sweet and loving mother — if so unlike in the ren- 
dering ! Then she was a tender-hearted, innocent 
girl, listening to the first love-words of her first 
lover, and believing in the absolute stability of a 
man’s honor and a woman’s self-respect ; now she 
was a woman, and — 

have something to tell you,” began Noel, 
in a voice that was a trifie less assured than its 
general tone. 


n 


MISERICORDIA. 


“Yes?” said the widow, looking down from 
the stars into his face. 

What a beautiful face it was ! — dark as that 
other had been ; paler than that other ; with less 
passion, less vivacity, less easy laughter, less facile 
love, but with more depth, more stability ; a 
higher type altogether, and, if with more control, 
with no less warmth. 

“You knew of my engagement with Millicent 
Despard ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes,” she said again, her color mounting to 
her face. He did not say “ you know,” but “ you 
knew,” The change of one letter wrought a world 
of dilference. 

“Well, it is broken now, of her own will and 
deed, and I am free,” said Noel, quietly ; but the 
eyes with which he looked into her face as he said 
this were not quiet. 

The widow drew her breath hard. She did 
not answer on the instant ; something had taken ! 
her voice from her, and she had to recover it and 
her ordinary self-possession before she could reply. 
And then those earnest, pleading eyes embarrassed \ 
her. She knew so well all that they meant — all ] 
that they wished to say. 

“She had courage,” she then said, after a 
pause. 

It sounded silly enough when she had spoken, ; 
but it was all that she could think of at the • 
moment. i 


MISERICORDIA. 


75 


Noel’s face lighted up with a sudden passion 
of pleasure, hut he kept himself still in hand. 

I should like you to interpret that to me,” he 
said, softly. ‘ ‘ Why should she have courage to 
break with me ? Am I so formidable ? ” 

She laughed her low, soft laugh — such a sweet 
and musical laugh as it was ! — rarely heard, but 
so entrancing when heard. 

Or so valuable,” she said, in a caressing voice. 

Metallically ? ” He laughed, too, but he 
wanted to have the ground made very clear. 

‘^By all accounts, metallically — among other 
things,” she said. ‘‘Mr. Noel Thorburn was 
spoken of to me as the great match of the place 
before I had been here a week.” 

His countenance fell. 

“That is always the curse clinging about a 
man’s possessions,” he said, for him bitterly, al- 
most irritably. “What is due to himself, and 
what to his money? or, indeed, can he be loved 
for himself at all, with the dazzle of those cursed 
‘ settlements ’ in the way ? ” 

“His own self -estimate can answer that ques- 
tion very easily,” said the widow, with a tender 
look in her hazel eyes ; “ and sometimes the esti- 
mate in which others hold him who do not care 
for his riches and do not want them,” she added, 
skirting by dangerous places with more courage 
than discretion. 

“ I care for the estimate of one person only,” 


76 


MISERICORDIA. 


said Noel, bending nearer and speaking lower and 
yet lower. And how sweet his voice was, thought 
the widow ! ^ 

‘^Only one?” Her heart beat fast, but out- 
wardly she was calm and composed enough. If 
it had to come, it must, she thought, preparing 
herself for her trial — and her fate. She was not ' 
fond of fencing, and if she must suffer wounds 
and give them, it were better to get the bad mo- 
ment over quickly. 

^‘You need hardly ask that,” he returned. ' 
“You know who is all the world to me — who 
makes my life, my happiness, my whole existence.” 

“ I hope not one to whom you can be nothing, | 
and who can be nothing to you worth having,” ^ 
she said, in a low voice that faltered in spite of 
her endeavor to keep it steady. “It is a mistake ' 
to accept clouds for things and appearances for j 
realities.” 

“Is it a cloud or appearance only that you j 
lov^ me ? ” asked Noel. “ I have been mad and J 
vain enough to think that I might win you, if j 
love and devotion, and the dearest, deepest passion J 
of a life, can win a woman. You know that I i 
love you, dear ; you have seen it and felt .it, and j 
you have not turned from me. You have not J 
made me hope in vain, have you ? Speak to me, 1 
Clarissa — cannot you love me ? You know how 1 
tenderly, how truly, I love you ! ” j 

At this moment the servant came and sum- J 


MISERICORDIA. 


77 


moned Mrs. Sutcliffe ; and when Mrs. Sutcliffe 
was summoned she had to go. 

It is not a question of my love for you,” said 
the widow, turning away her head. 

He took her hands in his and by gentle force 
drew her face toward him ; but she still looked 
away, over his head, to the stars — to the north- 
star, that had stood just over Vesuvius when she 
listened to that other, thirteen years ago, in the 
little village on the Bay of Naples, with the orange- 
blossoms and the young vines scenting the sweet 
spring air — and that now stood over the Surrey 
hills. 

“ If not that, of what then ? ” he asked. “ But 
tell me that you do love me, darling, and let me 
meet that other obstacle afterward. Assure me 
of the main thing, and trust to me for the rest.” 

She sat quite quiet for a moment, her hands in 
his, her eyes on the stars ; then she turned to him, 
of her own free will, suddenly. 

“Yes,” she said, “I do love you, Noel — pas- 
I sionately, devotedly ! I love you as a woman 
loves the dearest, noblest man of her life — ^the man 
to whom of all in the world she would wish to con- 
secrate her life — who has her truest respect as well 
j as her love ! But that is all ! If you want me to 
marry you, I cannot ! ” 

“You love me, and will not marry me? I 
cannot understand this ! ” he exclaimed. “ How 
can you expect me to take this answer ? ” 


78 


MISERICORDIA. 


“ I cannot,” she answered, wearily. 

Why ? Tell me why ! ” he pleaded. 

She laid her hands on his shoulders, and looked 
him full in the eyes. 

“ Fate,” she said, quietly. “ Did I not tell you, 
the other day, that we had no power ? I cannot, 
because my fate is against me.” 

Her lip quivered when she said this, and her 
eyes were full of tears. They gathered slowly, 
and slowly fell one by one, without false shame or 
attempt at disguise or concealment. 

“ I love you,” she said again, and bent forward 
till her face almost touched his — “think how 
much, when I can say it so quietly, so openly ! 
But ” — taking her hands from his shoulders an(3 
crossing them with a gesture of renunciation in 
her lap — “ I cannot marry you ! ” 

“ Tell me why ! ” he cried, his agitation in- 
creasing as her calmness and that strange, weary 
kind of composure deepened. “ Tell me, darling ! 
Riddles and mysteries are horrible to me. What- 
ever is before me, let me know it ! ” 

“ The reason will not give you any pleasure to 
hear,” she said simply. “ It is enough to know 
that it is impossible — that we can never marry — 
never.” 

“ In one breath you tell me that you love me, 
and in another throw me into despair. Do you 
think that I can bear this, and not go mad ? ” cried 
poor Noel, again taking her hands. “At least 


MISERICORDIA. 


79 


make me your confidant, and tell me what keeps 
us apart, if it is not your own will. Make me 
your friend, if you will not let me be your hus- 
band.” 

The tears were still falling quietly, slowly, one 
by one ; the Cenci-like character of the face was 
more than ever visible — she might almost have 
been that poor sweet-eyed victim, brought back to 
life and another phase of suffering. 

‘^No, I cannot tell you,” she said again ; “it 
would not make matters better for either of us if 
I did.” 

“ Believe me, it would ! I might help you — I 
might comfort you,” he said. 

“No ; it is best for both that you should not 
know,” she said. 

A dark shadow at that moment stole noiselessly 
round the angle and stood before the window. 
Intent on each other — ^her eyes cast down, his fixed 
on her hopeless, weary, grieving face — neither of 
the two within saw the man who stood there in 
the darkness of the night without ; neither saw 
the glitter of the bright black eyes glistening with 
the triumph of the successful hunter who has at 
last stalked his prey, nor saw the shine of the small 
white teeth between the full, red, parted lips, laugh- 
ing softly at the victory won and the pain that 
was to follow. It was her Fate, as she had said ; 
but neither knew then that it stood there in visible 
shape before them. 


80 


MISERICORDIA. 


Noel took her hands again, and carried them 
passionately to his lips. “ Let me he your friend, 
your trusted confidant, your truest and your most ^ 
faithful,” he said again, in an agitated voice. Let 
me hope that one day, hy my love, I shall conquer 
this shadowy obstacle, whatever it may be, and : 
win you for my own as my reward.” i 

‘‘Some day, perhaps ; yes, if God is good. 
Let us hope so. I would pray for it, if I believed 
that my prayers would be answered,” cried the 
widow, with strange passion. Was it all the pas- 
sion of love for Noel ? It seemed almost as if . 
some other feeling had mixed itself up with those r 
softer, tenderer impulses for him. She looked up ; 
at him again, her eyes raised, her head flung back, y 
her hands outstretched, her whole attitude, voice, ; 
manner, face, that of a woman yielding to her 
emotion ; casting pride and reticence to the winds t 
for the sake of this sweeter and dearer love. ( 
“Noel, I do love you!” she cried. “Whatever j 
happens, never doubt that ! I love you as a true 
man and noble-hearted gentleman — the best and | 
truest I have ever known ; and oh, how different | 
from what I have known ! If only it had been | 
my good fortune to have met with you in time — 1 
and met with you first ! ” J 

“ It is not too late ! ” he exclaimed, taking her 9 
in his arms. 9 

The man standing by the window stepped qui- *9 
etly into the room. I 


MISERICORDIA. 


81 


Clarissa mia ! ” he said, with perfect good- 
humor and good-breeding. ^^So ! I have found 
you at last, little runaway ! ” 

Mrs. Fairclough rose. Noel started to his feet. 
She, in a moment, calm, statuesque, self-possessed, 
as if she had stepped into a mask, or husk, like some 
creature in a fairy-tale. She neither screamed nor 
started, nor went through any pantomime whatso- 
ever that expressed any kind of feeling ; but Noel, 
an Englishman whose veins are supposed by the 
men of the south to run with ice, not blood, was 
in a tempest of passion — rage, despair, terror for 
her and of what was coming, love and anguish, all 
contending for the mastery in his torn and tor- 
tured heart. He made a step forward, and raised 
his hand as if to strike this bold intruder — this 
man coming in like a thief and speaking like a 
master ; but Mrs. Fairclough moved quietly be- 
tween them. 

^^Is that you, Salvatore?” she said, as calmly 
and with as much good-breeding as he himself had 
shown. Then, turning to Noel, she made a little 
gesture with her hand, still keeping her eyes fixed 
on the new-comer. My husband, Mr. Thorburn,” 
she said, white to her very lips — ^^il Marchese 
Capozzi.” 


6 


82 


MISERICORDIA. 


And now Millicent was avenged. This woman, 
for whom Noel Thorburn had, according to her ver- 
sion of things, treated her so ill that, in very self- 
respect, she had been compelled to give him back 
his liberty — the woman who had come between her 
and her prosperity as well as her happiness and love, 
between him and the most devoted heart that ever 
man had — quarrels, jealousies, tempers, and side- 
wind encouragements to good, blundering Frank 
not counting-^was proved to be nothing but an ad- 
venturess ; a creature living on false pretenses, and 
acting a horrible falsehood throughout. 

And this was her rival ! thought the girl, as 
she stood before the glass and counted up her 
physical charms with the self-complacency of the 
young, adding to them the moral qualities which 
she fancied that she had, but which, perhaps, those 
who knew her best would have doubted most. 
This was the exchange which Noel had been so , 
anxious to make : a pretty, true-hearted, devoted 
English girl, against whom not a word of scandal - 
had been ever breathed, the daughter of an admi- ’ 
ral, and known from her birth to every one — and 
this adventuress, this unknown alias^ who had ^ 
come here among them no one knew whence or 
why, and who had been suddenly proved, by her 
means, to be the wicked wretch she was ! 


MISERICORDIA. 


83 


Her revenge was sweet, and all tlie sweeter 
because so crushing and complete. Her jealousy 
and suspicion had justified themselves ; and not 
even Helen, who always took part against her, 
could now say that her instinct had been wrong ; 
nor could the boldest or the most charitable de- 
fend this dangerous schemer whom she had un- 
masked. 

Mrs. Fairclough — Mrs. Fairclough, indeed ! 
she had no right to that or any other honest Eng- 
lish name ! — was an adventuress whom it had been 
a sacred duty to unmask, and Millicent took glory 
to herself for the share that she had had in that 
unmasking. If it had not been for her acting 
through Frank, years might have passed before 
the plot would have been found out, and this run- 
away wife recovered by her husband ; but justice 
had been too strong for her, and Millicent and 
jealousy had won the day — with which thought 
she went to bed content, pity for the conquered 
not troubling her heart or brain. Has not the cry 
been always, Vae metis ! — and could she, a mere 
slip of a girl, change the laws of humanity ? 

Naturally the neighborhood was indignant at 
the whole affair, and indorsed Millicent’s action 
vigorously. The admiral’s pretty daughter might 
be a little fool, and her temper a source of occa- 
sional annoyance to some of the more peppery sort 
themselves ; but at least she was one of them — a 
daughter of the soil, who belonged to them, and 


84 


MISERICORDIA. 


who had been ill-treated, jilted, deceived, for the 
sake of a Cenci-faced adventuress who lived like a 
widow when she was a lawful wedded wife, and 
went by one name when she was really some one 
else ! And this was an offense to the natural pride 
of the place, which placed Mr. Noel Thorburn in 
an ugly position, and made his forgiveness diffi- 
cult. 

Then, the marchese himself made matters worse 
for the pseudo-widow, now his wife, by the very 
graces which irresistibly won him all the votes 
and left her all the black-balls. A man with that 
charming smile, that soft, caressing manner, that - 
almost boyish exuberance of careless good-humor, 
that graceful courtesy to his handsome wife, and 
the kindly way in which he accepted and made the 
best of the painful position in which she had placed 
him, was a man who certainly deserved a better 
fate, and proved himself at least not the one to . 
blame. When he went about among the people ^ 
— which he did freely, with regrets and apologies * 
for the disturbance in their society which this lit- t 
tie scandal must have created, and expressing his } 
hope that now his poor dear wife would see things -A 
ill a better and truer light, and that, having got -j 
rid of sundry bad advisers who had helped her to 
this trick, they should be able to return to the hap- J 
piness of love and their early married life — there M 
was not one who was not ready to swear by him, S 
and to affirm for a certainty that all the blame lay 


MISERICORDIA. 


85 


on her side. Even those stout-hearted Britons 
who shook their heads over the wily ways of 
foreigners in general, and were inclined to the 
woman’s side because she had at least English 
blood in her, if that blood had been damaged by 
her foreign up-bringing and outlandish marriage, 
even they were put down by the majority ; and 
for the fortnight immediately succeeding the dis- 
covery, by far the most popular person in Marston 
was that poor dear Marchese Capozzi, who had 
taken such trouble to find his vagabond wife, and 
had been so generous and forgiving to her when 
he had found her. 

No one spoke of him with so much enthusiasm 
as Mrs. Sutcliffe ; and, as they said among them- 
selves, no one had such good opportunities for 
judging, you know, as she had lived with the wife 
alone, and now with both together, and so could 
form a shrewd guess of how the land lay on both 
sides. According to her, it lay fair and full to the 
sun with the marchese, if but dark and in the 
shadow with the marchesa. He had cultivated 
Mrs. Sutcliffe from the beginning, and he had 
found his husbandry pay ; but Clarissa, too weary, 
too indolent, perhaps, to cultivate any one, had 
been content with the* knowledge of the truth, and 
had let things order themselves in appearance as 
they would. 

The marchese quite fiirted with the fair, fat, 
florid companion, and brought back reminiscences 


86 


MISERICORDIA. 


of the time when she, too, had been bright and 
blithe and bonny like the rest, and desirable in 
her degree. And what woman mouldering into 
her second half of the century is not grateful for 
this ? He had a hole bored in the penny which 
she had given him when a mandolin-player in the 
lane, and he used to enchant her by pulling it 
slyly out of his waistcoat-pocket, where he wore it 
hanging by a piece of thin elastic round his neck, 
and as slyly carrying it to his lips as a sweet and 
sacred remembrancer. 

He was a clever man in all things, astute and 
far-seeing — that boyish, careless good-humor of 
his useful for nothing so much as a mask whereby 
to hide his true nature ; but he had never shown 
himself much cleverer than in thus securing the 
companion on his side, as by her position in the 
house she carried more weight than any one else 
did, and represented a large portion of public 
opinion. 

If Mrs. Fairclough, now the marchesa, was 
the most strongly condemned, and the marchese, 
her wi'onged husband, was the most popular per- 
son at this moment in Marston, Noel Thorburn 
was the most unpopular, and had not a single 
friend or backer. The evil which he had wrought, 
if somewhat vague in the drawing, was of the 
deepest and blackest coloring ; consequently, when 
he took his place on the magistrate’s bench at the 
market-town on the first Saturday after the sud- 


MISERICORDIA. 


87 


den arrival of the marchese, he was made to un- 
derstand the meaning of cold shoulders and the 
sensation of having them turned to him. All the 
gentlemen treated him coolly, and the admiral 
cut him. It was a kind of field-day for the neigh- 
borhood, and the excitement of the moment was 
intense. For the admiral to go out of his way to 
be indignant to any one ! — the kindest-hearted old 
woman that had ever blundered through the ser- 
vice, and been saved by a kindly Providence from 
the countless disasters into which ignorance and 
supineness had run him broadside on ! Young 
Mr. Thorburn could not feel very comfortable, 
they all thought, shuffling a little in their places. 
But Noel was not the kind of man to trouble him- 
self much for what the world did, and less for 
what it thought. If his conscience was not crys- 
tal-clear about this matter — this matter meaning 
Millicent Despard — it was by no means so muddy 
as others supposed. Had the girl’s jealous pride 
and temper not taken fire, so far as she knew with- 
out cause, he was prepared to fulfill his engage- 
ment with her as a man of honor should, and 
never to have let her know what that fulfillment 
had made him suffer. Moreover, all concerning 
himself was swamped in his despair for the loss 
that had befallen the woman whom he loved. He 
knew nothing of her real history, but he had 
known enough of her to make him sure that it 
had been a tragedy, and that she was more the 


88 


MISERICORDIA. 


victim than a criminal. She was not the kind of 
woman to have left a husband for caprice or the 
weariness of satiety, still less for her own fault ; 
and when he looked back on the whole line of 
their intercourse, and remembered every word and 
look and smallest act that had been between them, 
he found nothing to condemn in her. She had 
been quiescent throughout, save every now and 
then a change of color in the sweet, sad face ; a 
quiver of the lips betokening pain or pleasure, as 
it might chance, but betokening feelings of some 
kind deeper than she allowed herself to express in 
words ; sometimes a tender look in those beautiful 
eyes which he had never seen aught but tender, 
and which he did not believe could be aught else 
— il Marchese Capozzi might have given a differ- 
ent verdict, and, save that she did not actively 
repel him, but let him come and go at his will, 
and let herself drift whither chance and circum- 
stance might take her, he had no accusation to 
bring against her — and of all this he made praise, 
not blame. 

It seemed as if she had been too trustful, or, it 
might be, too weary to fight against herself and 
fate — as if she had folded her hands and let the 
tide surround her, not looking to see whether she 
was caught or not, not caring to know whether 
she was lost or would be saved. Whatever had 
happened had come from him alone, so far as this 
beautiful sorrow was concerned. She was blame- 


MISERICORDIA. 


89 


less throughout, and if she had need of a man’s 
loving heart as her shield, she should find it in his. 

This was the first time that Noel had left his 
own house since that fatal evening which had de- 
stroyed his illusions and brought the reality of 
the marchese ; consequently he had heard noth- 
ing, and only the feeling that it would be coward- 
ly for his own part, and might tell against her in 
public opinion, brought him to the town in the 
ordinary duties of his condition to-day. He did 
not know how the trail had been laid by which 
the searching husband had come on his concealed 
wife, but all the rest of the world knew it. For 
Millicent, proud of being the heroine of ever so 
small a drama, told every one what she and Frank 
Hardisty had done between them ; and how and 
by what lucky chance it had been that Frank had 
fallen in with the marchese, and had unconsciously 
given him the cue. 

It is not often that a young girl has the chance 
of doing anything striking in a country place, and 
when it comes it is a God-send not to be lightly 
disregarded. Millicent Despard did not lightly 
regard hers, and took care that others should not 
be ignorant of her claims to consideration. And 
thus it came round to Noel to-day how and why 
it was that what else might have been a secure 
retreat for life had been invaded, and the safety 
from suffering and insult, which had been bought 
at such a sacrifice, had been made unavailing. He 


90 


MISERICORDIA. 


heard it all in the magistrate’s room, where Mr. 
Linwood, the general tale-bearer of the district, 
and always on good terms with every one, passed 
over to him from the other side, and, after first 
condoling with him on his bad looks and evident 
state of illness, whispered in his ear what was 
public property to every one but himself. 

“ It is a pity that Miss Despard did not leave 
things alone,” said Noel ; ^^she was playing with 
edged tools, and has done more harm than any one 
can now put right.” 

“Still, a woman is best with her husband,” 
said Mr. Linwood, doubtfully. 

“That depends on the husband,” answered 
Noel, “ and, from what I have seen of Mrs. Fair- 
clough — ” 

“ La Marchesa Capozzi,” interrupted Mr. Lin- 
wood. 

“ La Marchesa Capozzi, if you will — she is not 
likely to have left hini without grave cause.” 

“ Ah ! poor creature, I dare say ! ” the little man 
said, with a well-managed sigh that meant sym- 
pathy. “Women have much to bear in this life, 
and certainly one sees the most charming women 
in the world married to the greatest brutes. How 
they do it I cannot make, out.” 

He was unmarried himself, and so far unpre- 
judiced ; but he always felt that there was one 
woman somewhere about the world who was less 
happy than she would have been had he done his 


MISERICORDIA. 


91 


duty, and made a Mrs. Linwood among the most 
blessed of her sex. For the same reason, having 
no daughter to marry off and settle, he was able 
to be civil to Noel Thorburn to a degree which 
virtuous husbands and careful fathers disowned ; 
whether he was or was not a flirt and a minor edi- 
tion of Don Juan, engaged to one and carrying on 
with another, not belonging to Mr. Linwood to 
establish or resent. Indeed, he left people at all 
times to manage their own affairs, he used to say, 
smiling ; and he himself took no sides, but preached 
universal peace and voted general tolerance. At 
the same time, he always managed to inflame the 
sores already festering and add fuel to the fires 
already burning ; as now, when he told Noel how 
it had come about that the poor woman had been 
hunted down in her seemingly safe retreat, and 
forced back to the companionship from which she 
had escaped. 

And as things for the most part come in groups 
in this odd world of ours, sorrows and joys alike 
clustering together like the black berries of the 
nightshade or the crowded blooms of monthly 
roses, Avhen Noel was riding slowly home, he over- 
took Millicent and her sister Helen walking in the 
same direction as his own. 

His heart was sore and full of bitter rage 
against the girl whose temper and jealousy had 
worked all this ill, though only so short a time ago 
he had thought to make her his wife, and had be- 


92 


MISERICORDIA. 


lieved that he loved her. It was not for himself 
that he was sore. He was strong and magnani- 
mous, and could forgive without trouble; but it was 
for her, the poor, pale victim of a cruel fate and 
human wickedness — his Cenci, with the Cenci’s 
sorrows and without her sins. 

As he came up to the sisters he flung himself 
from his horse and held out his hand to Helen. 
He only lifted his hat to Millicent. He could not 
touch the hand of one who had dealt so foul a 
blow to the woman he loved. 

Millicent saw the slight, and accepted it as the 
first declaration of war. She was almost glad of 
it. Strong to the contest as she was, she did not 
want to be weakened by any show of sympathy 
or forgiveness from Noel. She was in love with 
him still, in her way, and, for all that had hap- 
pened, would have cast herself at his feet had he 
beckoned her there. It was best, then, as it was, 
and she mentally strung her bow and made ready. 

Helen, in love with no one and hating no one, 
but sorry that her sister was not to be married, 
partly because it would have been such a brilliant 
settlement for her, partly because she thought that 
Millicent would be improved by being under the 
control of a wise, strong man, and also because she 
looked forward to a nice little quiet life together 
with her dear father, when they would have no 
one to worry them with tears and temper, but 
would be in perpetual peace and rest together — 


MISERICORDIA. 


93 


neither in love nor in hate, only sorry, for all these 
reasons — was just as frank and kind to Noel as 
ever. She had always denied the graver aspects 
of his friendship with the widow, and had be- 
lieved her sister’s jealousy to have been the cause 
of all that had happened. 

‘‘ I am glad to meet you. Miss Millicent,” said 
Noel, in a cold voice. “ I wanted a word of ex- 
planation with you.” 

I cannot imagine on what,” said Millicent, 
flushing. 

‘‘No? You think it has been well to act the 
part of amateur detectives, you and Mr. Frank 
Hardisty, to bring sorrow and anguish on an un- 
oftending woman who had the misfortune to be 
my friend ? ” 

“ It was my duty — the duty of any one and 
every one to unmask that adventuress if they 
could,” said Millicent, hotly and grandly. 

“No, that is not the right word for her,” he 
said' looking at her sternly. “ I must ask you to 
withdraw it. She was an unhappy wife taking 
refuge in flight, under a feigned nanie, from the 
intolerable wretchedness of her life ; and you have 
destroyed her, and given her back to the keeping 
of her tyrant.” 

“If she was only this, she should not have 
passed as a widow,” said Millicent, feeling that 
she had the best of it there. 

“ Did she ever say that she was a widow ? Did 


94 


MISERTCORDIA. 


she, to you or any one in the place, confide a word 
of explanation about herself, or say who or what 
she was? It was we who believed her to be a 
widow, not she herself who called herself one.” 

She knew what we thought, and she acted up 
to her character,” said Millicent, with meaning. 

She might or might not know. She simply 
lived here without her husband, and left the world 
to form its own conclusions.” 

And encouraged the attentions of unmarried 
men ! ” cried Millicent. 

She did not,” said Xoel, firmly. “ Whoever 
says so, utters that which is not true, and as cruel 
as it is scandalous.” 

‘‘You would defend her if she had committed 
murder ! ” said Millicent, angrily. “ You are be- 
witched and blinded by her ; every one can see it, 
and every one is talking of it.” 

“ What I am or am not has nothing to do with 
the question,” was the answer, made sternly. “ I 
only want to make clear to you the infinite cruelty 
of which you have been guilty — the infinite mis- 
chief that you have wrought to gratify a mo- 
ment’s impulse of jealous anger against a woman 
of whom you had no right to be jealous — then.” 

He had so much grace of conscience and re- 
gard for truth as to put in the qualifying adA^erb. 

“ Then ! ” exclaimed Millicent, with that well- 
knoAvn toss of her head. 

“You had, and have, only the right to that 


MISERICORDIA. 


95 


time,” said Noel ; “ and it is that time of which 
I speak.” 

“ I assure you, Noel, I am exceedingly sorry 
for all this,” said Helen, suddenly. She thought 
the quarrel had lasted long enough, and that Noel 
had said all that was necessary, and all that could 
be expected to do good. “ I knew nothing what- 
ever of it at all. If Millicent had consulted me, I 
would have prevented her doing anything of the 
kind — so wrong and so silly, too, as it has all been ! 
But she acted on the impulse of the moment ; and 
though I am sure that she is just as sorry as any 
one else, you know what she is, and how hard it 
is to get her to confess her faults.” 

I have done no fault at all, and nothing to 
confess or be sorry for ! ” cried Millicent. 

No ; I do not suppose that you did know 
anything,” returned Noel to Helen, not noticing 
Millicent’s remark. “ I only wish that she had, 
indeed, consulted you, and been guided by your 
advice ; for, believe me, dear Helen, she has done 
irreparable mischief, worked irreparable misfor- 
tune, to every one ! ” 

What a dreadful pity ! ” said Helen, with an 
indignant glance to Millicent. She did not know 
what else to say, and, indeed, it was all that she 
could say. 

“You do not know poor Mrs. Fairclough’s 
history,” continued Noel. Nor did he ; but he as- 
sumed more knowledge than he possessed, that he 


96 


MISERICORDIA. 


might shield her better ; and, truly, love had 
given him an insight deeper than had been vouch- 
safed to the indifference or the certainty of oth- 
ers. “ She was justified in her action, believe me ! 
— she was right to leave that man, and to hide her- 
self away at the ends of the earth to escape him.” 

“ How can you say that ? — how can you know 
that he is so bad ? ” cried Millicent, to whom the 
marchese had been specially flattering and delight- 
ful. “ Frank says he is most charming, and Frank 
saw him nearly every day in London for a long 
time.” 

Frank ! ” said Noel, contemptuously. 

‘^Yes, Frank,” returned Millicent; ‘‘and, at 
all events, Frank is a man of honor, and knows 
how to treat ladies.” 

“ And it is because I know how they should be 
treated that I speak to you as I have done,” said 
Noel; “because I believe that you have both a 
heart and a conscience hidden beneath all this 
girlish folly, that I want you to turn your eyes in- 
ward, and see for yourself the evil that you have 
done.” 

“I have been made quite miserable enough 
about all this matter, and will not be made more 
so,” said Millicent, beginning to cry ; for which 
Helen scolded her, and Noel, in his old voice and 
manner, said, “ Don’t cry, dear ; but think serious- 
ly of what I have said” — which naturally only 
made her cry the more. 


MISERICORDIA. 


97 


At this moment the marchese came up, and 
Noel, mounting in his usual quiet, leisurely way, 
after meeting the glittering black eyes with more 
steadiness than they themselves had, rode off just 
as Clarissa’s husband, with a burst of ingenuous 
pleasure, flung himself from his horse, and poured 
out his delight at this chance meeting with a boy’s 
innocent abandonment of joy. He was so very 
glad to see the signorine ! he loved them, he said, 
so very much more than all here — more than any 
one, indeed, anywhere ! The minds and manners 
and habits of real English signorine were all so 
charming to him ! — they produced an enthusiasm 
that was a kind of ecstasy, and made him feel how 
inferior his country-people were, when placed by 
the side of these noble, magnificent, semi-divine 
Inglese ! After he had said a good deal more to 
the same purpose, speaking to Helen but looking 
at Millicent, whose dark, ripe, flushing beauty 
pleased him, he asked, suddenly : 

What is that gentleman’s name who was 
with you just now ? ” 

Thorburn,” said Helen. 

He repeated it. 

‘‘ Thorburn ! ” he said. “ Thorburn ! Yes, I 
remember now. That was the name my wife said, 
on the evening when I came down and found her 
in the gentleman’s arms. Fact ! ” he said, answer- 
ing Millicent’s look of horror and disgust. My 
poor, dear, imprudent wife had forgotten to tell 
7 


98 


MISERICORDIA. 


him that she had a husband in the world, and I 
came into the room just at the interesting moment 
when he was asking her to marry him ! It was 
rather a hard welcome to a man who had been 
seeking an adored wife for the last year — was it 
not ? ” he asked, his face full of tender sadness, 
and his bright black eyes moist with tears. 

What a wicked woman ! what a wretch ! ” 
cried Millicent, indignantly. 

‘^No, dear signorina, not a wretch,” he ex- 
claimed, magnanimously ; “ only a very wrong- 
headed, mistaken child ! ” 

A few days after this a small parcel and a note 
were brought to Noel. The note began with 
nothing and was signed with nothing, but it was 
not difficult to know who was the writer. 

Forgive me,” it said. “ I was to blame ; but 
the temptation was too strong. After long years 
of disillusionment, it was something to find again 
a man that I could believe in, that I could love. I 
let myself drift, knowing that you were safe, be- 
cause engaged, and believing that I only should 
suffer when the time for parting came. Had I 
thought that you would have been pained, I would 
have acted differently, and would have told you 
all. But it was too strong for me ; and so, forgive 
me, and think kindly of me, if you can. We 
leave here to-morrow. I have at last induced him 
to go back to Naples, where we live, and to forego 
the rest of his triumph here. It is chiefly to keep 


MISERICORDIA. 


99 


that poor girl out of the way of one who never 
spared woman nor forgave man. She is impulsive 
and headstrong, and he knows the whole art of fas- 
cination only too well ; and I do not want another 
sorrow and shame of the same kind in my life, 
more especially here. Forgive her, too, Noel — dear 
Noel ! — for my sake, and, if you can, go back to 
your old relations with her — if you can ! But let 
me know of your welfare sometimes, and do not 
quite forget me. I cannot write to you, but you 
can let me hear from you, or of you, by those 
newspapers of yours, when you may speak to me, 
and I shall understand what no one else will. 
Good-by. Will you think it impious in me to say, 
God bless you ? I do say it. God bless you, Noel ! 
— best, dearest, best beloved ! ” 

With this note came the sketch of those pur- 
ple hills, with the tract of golden moor at their 
feet, at which they had worked together when 
they sat in the drawing-room of the Cottage, and 
looked out into earth and sky, and into each oth- 
er’s eyes, and had grown into love through Na- 
ture and her interpreter Art. It was the dearest 
and most significant thing that she could have 
given him ; and Noel took it as he might have 
taken a gift from the grave when life had flown 
and hope had died with it. He put it before him, 
and looked at it till a strange blinding blur came 
before his eyes ; and then, leaning his face on his 
crossed arms, he suddenly broke down, as he had 


100 


MISERICORDIA. 


not done since he was a lad of fourteen, when his 
mother had died and he had stood by the grave 
at her funeral. 


VII. 

Home again ! Back to the passionate charm 
and fervid beauty of the south ; back to vineyards 
and orange-groves, to olive-gardens and fig-trees, 
to loggias and pergolas, myrtles and pomegranates, 
from oaks and elms and rustic garden-seats set on 
the lawn, and homely orchards standing round ivy- 
covered, low thatched cottages ; back to the glory 
of the deep-blue sky and purple sea, from flying 
mists, gathering clouds, and stretches of heathery 
moor with gorse for the golden light and dying 
bracken for the russet shadow ; back from the 
tranquil softness of the Surrey hills to the hidden 
terrors of Vesuvius, with its hehrt of fire and its 
feet clothed with vines and olives ; back to Italy 
from England ; from freedom and safety to sla- 
very and despair ; from an acted disguise to a 
living lie ! 

How well she knew it all, and how her heart 
turned from all — turned from a scene and place 
once to her like a garden lent by Heaven to 
earth ! As she drove along that grand coast-road 
from Castellamare in the sunset, to the villeggia- 
tura ” on the hill, where some of her happiest 


MISERICORDIA. 


101 


days had been spent, she remembered with what 
almost superstitious horror she used to think then 
of England ; how, to her fancy, Englishmen 
were self - conscious machines ; Englishwomen 
masses of artifice and affectation ; and England 
itself but a cold and miserable land of fogs and 
vapors, where life stagnated in one unbroken, 
muddy pool, and love was like the sun, something 
spoken of but not really known. And now this 
despised and chilly land was her Zoar, and an 
Englishman was the only person in the world 
whom she loved ! 

It was a transformation such as she could not 
have believed possible at the time when it was as 
if some beautiful young god had come down 
from the sky to make her the most blessed among 
the daughters of men. But her god had faded 
away into dream-land with the rest ; and the illu- 
sions wrought by faith and love were with the 
fallen petals of last year’s orange-blossoms — their 
fragrance and purity trampled into the dust, and 
dead forever. 

She had married when too young, and the 
man whom she had married had been also too 
young. He had his character to make, his true 
self to develop ; and she had her experience to 
gain. The chances whether his as yet fluid youth 
would set into a noble or an ignoble maturity 
were too perilous to have been braved, had a 
choice been given. Had her mother had time 


102 


MISERICORDIA. 


before her, things might have been different ; 
but, dying as she was, it was the best that she 
could do. Her daughter must be left to chance, 
or to fate. And fate, as we know, worked ill 
for her. 

The character that was so pleasant in its fluid 
youth, set into still as pleasant outwardly, but 
what was intrinsically, an utterly despicable ma- 
turity — a kind of thing where the facile temper 
of indolence stood for the good heart of human 
sympathy ; where passion looked like love, and 
laxity of principle was the true name for what 
passed for generosity of judgment ; a maturity 
which recognized no honor save that of social 
standing with its adjunct, wealth, and kept only 
just as fair with public decency of living as was 
absolutely necessary for the maintenance of that 
public standing ; a maturity which made of evil 
its good, and of good the butt for its poor, weak 
wit, and to trust to which was like walking over 
a morass or building on a quicksand. 

Neither truth nor honor ; neither the chivalry 
of real love nor the self-control of real honor ; 
neither the manliness of work nor the ennobling 
influence of purpose, nor yet a breath of patriot- 
ism nor of public spirit — nothing but self-indul- 
gence and the pursuit of amusements, no matter 
of what kind, nor whether they were honest or 
corrupt — it was not a bright outlook for a girl 
who had her ideas of right and wrong still clear 


MISERICORDIA. 


103 


and defined, and her belief that God had given 
man a law by which to walk still unshaken ! 

For, though by education Clarissa had been 
developed into something that was not an Eng- 
lishwoman pur sang, yet she had the sturdy 
English fibre in her as a central principle, 
strengthening her to good or evil, as it might 
chance ; but at this time of her life there was 
nothing in her save what was good and true and 
pure. She had also the inherited traditions of a 
man’s honor and a woman’s fair fame as princi- 
ples for her own guidance and to judge of what 
passed around her ; and her faith in a man’s 
trustworthiness and a woman’s constancy was 
sacred to her. What she saw creep gradually 
about her and her house a few years after her 
marriage — the change which time and vicious 
companionship, acting on weakness, vicious in- 
clination, and a nature neither loyal nor honest, 
wrought in her husband — the hollowness of her 
life, the destruction of her personal happiness, 
and the loss of her self-respect which it included 
— at first nearly broke* her heart, and then ended 
by eating away the delTcate sharpness of her 
moral principles. 

But she did not go very far astray. The indo- 
lence and want of nobility of life, taught by climate 
and example, only created a certain weary belief 
in fatalism, which explained, if it did not justify, 
all. But it was a doctrine under which she took 


104 


MISERICORDIA. 


more benefit than she allowed. Her husband was 
actively bad, but she was fated to pain ; and, 
when her pain became too heavy to bear, fated 
to revenge. Had she committed murder, she 
would have said the same thing — ‘^It was my 
fate ! ” 

It was a comfortable doctrine, as most false 
doctrines are, and saved trouble if it saved noth- 
ing else. It deadened her own conscience when she 
grew weary of suffering, and turned her thoughts 
to escape ; so that when she left her husband, di- 
vided between two passions almost equally strong 
— that of high play, not always honestly conduct- 
ed, and the wife of his bosom friend, Giuseppe 
Biondelli — and went under a feigned name to 
England, she had no feeling of wrong-doing, no 
self-reproach for laying down her cross and aban- 
doning her post. We must all make our lives as 
comfortable as we can, she thought ; and as she 
had no case for an enforced legal separation, and 
as her husband refused to allow her one by private 
agreement or of personal grace, she took matters 
into her own hands, and fled — taking her measures 
so craftily and hiding 6er spoor so cleverly, that 
nothing but chance, or fate — working through 
Millicent and Frank Hardisty — would have ever 
discovered her. Ho, she had no self-reproach for 
what she had done — only sorrow that she had been 
discovered, and that fate had led her to love 
Hoel Thorburn, and had impelled him to love her. 


MISERICORDIA. 


105 


And this, not because it was wrong, but because 
it was useless and unhappy. 

There was nothing else to regret, she thought, 
looking at her husband as they drove along that 
well-known road — wondering to herself, as she 
looked with a scorn that included him as well as 
herself, how it was that she had ever believed in 
the possibility of his goodness ! 

And now her real time of trial began. What 
had gone before had been mere child’s play com- 
pared to all that followed on her return ; partly 
because she herself had changed even more than 
her surroundings. They, perhaps, had sunk a lit- 
tle deeper, but she had gone many steps higher ; 
consequently, the distance between them was 
greater than before. The contact with a pure, if 
narrow and somewhat bigoted, society had touched 
the old, honest chord of English rectitude in her 
heart ; her love for a man like Noel, chivalrous 
and high-minded, tender and pure-hearted, had 
braced her moral being, so that once more she was 
able to believe in her fellow-men, and to reverence 
truth and honor. And it was pain beyond all that 
she had ever suffered, to have to stand in the midst 
of the corruption that surrounded her, and accept 
with smiles and fair seeming the hideous false- 
hoods of her life. 

Her husband had accounted for her disappear- 
ance with the wonderful tact given by indifference 
and subtlety. He had spoken of it as a planned 


106 


MISERICORDIA. 


tiling, well known to each but not imparted to the 
world ; and he told all his friends in turn, to each 
as a sacred secret which he knew would be divulged 
at the next street-corner, that his beautiful wife, 
looking so full of health and vigor, was afflicted 
with a malady which she wished to conceal from 
the world, and which would soon be decided either 
by her death or recovery. She had gone to some 
Hungarian doctor with an unpronounceable name ; 
and he would soon either go for her, or she would 
return of her own accord. When Giuseppe Bion- 
delli’s wife quarreled with him because he had 
tired of her, as he did of all women in time, he 
went over to England, as we know, thinking that 
the most likely place where Clarissa would be 
found — as deserters are always taken on the old 
homestead, and escaped prisoners in their well- 
known haunts ; but he said that he had gone to 
the Hungarian doctor, whence he would either 
bring back his wife cured, or the certificate of her 
death. 

His friends feigned to believe him. It was the 
easiest thing to do ; so that no scandal was talked 
on the piazzas and in the cercoli, though enough 
went about from loggia to loggia, and in the pri- 
vate corners of drawing-rooms, conveyed by the 
lifting of an eyebrow, the flash of a fan, the move- 
ment of two fingers across the face. Still, the ab- 
sence of undeniable publicity is always a gain, and 
dumb talk commits every one less than spoken 


MISERICORDIA. 


107 


words. So that when the marchesa came hack, 
and was asked all sorts of questions about her mys- 
terious malady, and how the doctor had treated 
her, she had the satisfaction, such as it was, of 
knowing that what might be said of her was said 
in the dark, and that she alone had to bear the 
burden. 

It was hard to bear ; and more than once she 
was on the point of telling the truth aloud, when 
a look from her husband would recall her to her- 
self, and seal her lips as he desired they should be 
sealed. She played her part, on the whole, cred- 
itably enough ; but she loathed herself for con- 
senting to such a life, till she wondered that she 
did not die of the anguish of her shame. 

Meanwhile, things went badly between the 
young people themselves. The red, ripe lips that 
laughed so readily abroad, poured out torrents of 
passionate abuse or more stinging sarcasm at home. 
The gay, good-humored tolerance which made the 
marchese so popular in society, became the very 
cynicism of disbelief in virtue, or worse contempt 
for it when forced to confess that it was a shade 
less unreal than usual. The name of Noel Thor- 
burn, which she kept as a sacred talisman in her 
heart, became the by-word of his scorn ; and when 
he had nothing else to amuse him, he found his 
pleasure in going again and again over the scene 
that he had witnessed, repeating the words which 
he had heard, and ridiculing as a laughable farce. 


108 


MISERICORDIA. 


good only for Stentorella to act, what she felt had 
been the most solemn moment of her life. 

All that was best in her had been roused into 
being at that moment. She had risen superior to 
herself, to her education, her influences ; and it 
was hard to hear what had been with her a mo- 
ment of true religious fervor, however disastrously 
enshrined, flung to the rude winds of his contempt, 
as a man might fling a dead child to the wolves. 

But she bore it ; if at times with a struggle 
and active anguish, at others with that abstracted, 
dreamy kind of insensibility, as of a creature 
drugged so as not to feel pain. Every now and 
then, however, her large, soft eyes lighted up with 
such a fire as might have once burned in the Cenci’s; 
and then she looked dangerous, and Salvatore held 
his peace. In general as cold to him as if she had 
been Galatea still in the marble whatever his 
words, when he roused this latent power of pas- 
sion that only slumbered in her heart, he owned 
to himself that he was afraid. The very quies- 
cence and statuesque indifference of her ordinary 
state made the change both more terrifying and 
more complete ; and il Marchese Salvatore Capoz- 
zi was not a brave man, as we term bravery. He 
could have done rash things in hot blood, but he 
could not meet danger face to face in cool. 

Suddenly, but not broadly outlined, a certain 
change came over Clarissa. She was no warmer 
to her husband, but she made herself somewhat 


MISERICORDIA. 


109 


less isolated. She answered him when he spoke 
to her other than by monosyllables, and as if he 
were a human being like any one else ; and she 
even held short, fragmentary, lazy conversations 
with him on indifferent subjects, when he forgot 
to taunt her about her flight and to jeer her about 
her English lover. 

He watched her in her changing temper as he 
would have watched a panther or a leopardess 
creeping stealthily through the long sweet grass 
to where he stood— as one animal on guard might 
watch another ; but he saw nothing to make him 
believe that she was playing a part or preparing a 
surprise. Her listless quietness was just as indo- 
lent and graceful as before — her soft eyes as dreamy 
and as veiled. She had only tired of her self- 
made isolation, had taken counsel with her good 
sense, and had resolved to accept her life as he had 
ordered it. It was the wisest thing that she could 
do, and, from one so little fitted to fight, the only 
thing. He was as astute and suspicious as the 
men of his nation are by nature, but he was no 
more able than another to see through stone walls 
or to surmount barriers in an open plain. She 
was an Englishwoman, a ‘^mad-head” by birth, 
thought the marchese, watching her from be- 
tween his half-shut eyes while she sat in the low 
chair, fiung back as she had been flung back in the 
Cottage drawing-room when Noel thought to put 
the cup to his lips, and it had slipped from his 


110 


MISERICORDIA. 


hand untasted, and dashed into atoms at his feet. 
But if one of the mad-heads ” in one direction, 
she had the strength of her people in another, he 
thought, and knew when she was fairly conquered, 
and when it was the wiser thing to yield. As now ; 
thinking which, he almost respected her, and won- 
dered if, for diversion, he should ever find himself 
in love with her again. 

What would he have said had he known that 
the change had been wrought by a long, earnest, 
eloquent letter from ^^oel, received in answer to 
one from her, replying to an advertisement for leave 
to write, wherein he urged her to live up to her 
highest, to make the best of her circumstances, 
and be true to her noblest ideal ? — a letter that had 
spoken to her soul like the voice of an angel, and 
roused her from moral apathy and mental slumber 
to active struggle and faithful endeavor. He 
would not have understood it had he known of it; 
but it was true all the same. 

It happened that at this time there was a cer- 
tain lull in the excesses of the marchese’s life. 
The last reigning favorite had disappeared from 
the scene, and no one else had yet been exalted in 
her stead. A few of his more reckless friends had 
gone for their “ villeggiatura ” to La Cava, to 
Capri, to Ischia ; and as he was one of the men 
Avho cannot live alone, and to whom the whole 
charm of life is companionship, he was thrown on to 
his wife’s hands for the moment ; and she, still in- 


MISERICORDIA. 


Ill 


spired by Noel, bore him on her time and thoughts 
with wonderful graciousness and almost geniality. 
It was a hollow truce, truly ; but for the moment 
it was a truce, though one that, in spite of her 
better resolve, would be broken on either side at 
the first opportunity. 

Among his other pleasures, the marchese 
owned a yacht, the best of its kind in the bay 
— one of the things which, in the early, happy 
days, had given the young wife some of her 
sweetest hours. Of late years she had not been 
on board at all ; and, in truth, she was scarcely 
wanted, and would have been strangely out of 
place among the companions whom he chiefly 
chose as his messmates ; but one day now, during 
this unsigned peace between the two and the in- 
terregnum on his side, as Salvatore was going 
down to the Marina for a sail, he asked her, care- 
lessly, if she would go with him. The day was 
bright, the breeze pleasant ; if she liked to go, he 
would take her. He did not ask her — that was 
not his way in these latter times — he merely gave 
her his permission ; which, all things considered, 
he thought good enough. 

The beauty of the day, the loveliness of the 
scene, had worked something of their old charm. 
She looked out over the bright, blue bay, to the 
golden-green passing into purple and blue of Ve- 
suvius ; to the misty charm of Ischia ; and some- 
thing came back in her heart of longing for the 


112 


MISERICORDIA. 


past — of yearning to be able to believe in it, to 
realize it again. Though she knew that she was 
going only to the grave of that past, and that it 
would never be made alive and real, it was some- 
thing to visit its grave. Some beloved things 
have none at all ! With an odd kind of pain at 
her heart, an odd kind of softness in her eyes, she 
said. Yes, she would go with him, and got up to 
make herself ready. 

He half wondered at her ready acquiescence ; 
it was not like her usual pride ; but he, too, was a 
little tired of the strife, and touched for the mo- 
ment by better feelings ; besides, no one else was 
in the way to amuse him, and he Avas not sorry to 
be able to fall back on her, for want of any one 
fresher or more interesting. So the circumstance 
fitted well on both sides. They went down to 
the Marina, and she stepped on board and took 
her place in the seat of honor, as she had taken it 
how often before ! How well she remembered it ! 
— both when she had gone with her mother for 
the first time, before her marriage ; and then, for 
the second, after she was his wife, and while he 
represented to her all that there was of human 
sweetnessj grace, and love ! 

How beautiful she looked to-day, and how 
handsome he, with his soft, Italian beauty and 
suppleness of limb and action ! Surely, a noble- 
looking couple ! The master, with his two sailors, 
noticed how frank and friendly they seemed to 


MISERICORDIA. 


113 


be together ; how full he was of small cares and 
pleasant attentions ; and how sweetly she accept- 
ed all, and smiled back her gracious thanks in re- 
turn. Everything was done for her that a man 
knows so well will please and make a woman hap- 
py ; and for all she sometimes bowed her beautiful 
head, and sometimes raised her dainty, ungloved 
hand, with the open sleeves falling far back, and 
showing the whole of her large, white arms, as 
she made that pretty gesture of thanks with her 
fingers, which goes as far as words. The men felt 
glad to think that the two young people were on 
better terms together. They knew what they 
knew, and could have told some strange stories 
had they been so minded ; and they were southern 
Italians, not incapable of adding to their knowl- 
edge by suspecting more than they were sure 
of ; still, they were glad to see the friendship be- 
tween the two to-day, and only hoped that it 
would last. 

They sailed about the bay — the wind blowing 
brisk and free, but only enough to give life and 
animation — till the sun set and the moon and the 
stars came out. All the beautiful circumstances 
of the Golden Shell woke into being — the lights of 
Naples ; the festal fires and rockets of the towns 
along the coast ; the fishermen’s boats shining and 
quivering like large fire-flies a little way from shore ; 
pleasure-boats, with music sounding strangely 
sweet and dreamy from the distance ; steamers, 
8 


114 


MISERICORDIA. 


lighted up like floating hotels, gliding swiftly 
along the bay ; Capri and Ischia, and the rocky 
headlands about Misenum ; the wooded heights 
of Castellamare, and the homely terraces of Yico 
— all were touched by living points of fire, one by 
one ; while the stars shone faint and far, and the 
moon poured her pure, white glory over all. And 
again the wife’s heart and memory went back to 
that first evening of her young life, when a few 
loving words had, as it were, opened the gates 
of heaven and taken her soul into eternal glory. 
Yes, she would do what she could. She loved 
that other with the whole force and fervor of her 
soul ; but she would carry to him her best en- 
deavor after self -suppression, and a very religious- 
ness of striving to lead a holy and a worthy life, 
as the noblest tribute she could make. 

So, sitting in the low-swinging chair, her eyes 
fixed on the stars, she dreamed back over many 
things, regretting some, but full of earnestness 
and design to make the best of what remained — if 
for no higher motive than to be worthy of Noel ; 
still to make the best. 

Her husband came and sat down by her, and 
caught the expression in her face. It was the face 
which he had seen when he stood by the open 
window of the Cottage, and she had looked at 
the north-star, while Noel Thorburn had told her 
of his love. 

He lightly touched her arm. 


MISERICORDIA. 


115 


Dreaming ? ” he said in English, showing 
his teeth, smiling. 

Perhaps,” she answered. 

Do you want an interpreter ? Shall I he 
your soothsayer ? ” 

If it will please you,” she said. 

Well, let me see ; where shall we begin ? At 
the beginning ? At the small, well-arranged little 
dinner, with the fat old fool to keep the handsome 
runaway in countenance ; for the dessert — a sol- 
emn, pale-faced English mister sitting stiffly in 
his chair, while a graceful, half -Italian woman — 
only half, mind you ! — splayed with him as a cat 
plays with a mouse, and made big eyes, and pre- 
tended to be sorry, poor widow ! but she could 
not — indeed, she could not ; she would if she 
could, but she was not able ; she would not say 
why — she buried that uncomfortable obstacle of 
the deserted husband breaking his heart for her 
in Naples ; but he was to take her on trust, and 
believe her when she said that she loved him, and 
would if sh^ could, only she could not. And then 
the return of the husband just at the very mo- 
ment — such an ingenious arrangement ! — such a 
beautiful act, set by Providence and played by 
Fate ! but I do not think a very pleasant surprise — 
was it ? Ah ! Clarissa, have I been a true-reading 
interpreter of your dream properly ? ” 

Yes,” said Clarissa, with a soft smile, as soft 
as his, and as unreal ; quite right ; but,” she 


116 


MISERTCORDIA. 


raised her eyes, and they flamed like Are, you 
forgot to add that this dream of love for the one 
will never die — never ! never ! never ! — and that 
the reality of hatred and contempt for the other 
will die only when that other does. If I could 
make you feel, Salvatore, how I love the one, and 
how I despise the other ! ” 

“All in good time,” he said, laughing. “Ev- 
erything comes to those who know how to wait.” 
“ Yes, everything,” she said, “ even death.” 

He turned pale. “ You are a fool for talking 
of death on board ship,” he said, angrily. “ What 
do you mean by such evil omens ? ” 

“ What will come,” she answered, looking him 
full between the eyes. 

Even as she spoke a sudden gust of wind 
caught the little vessel sharply. A gale sprang 
up in that unexpected and sudden way in which 
gales and storms do spring up on the Mediterra- 
nean, and the yacht quivered and strained, and 
heeled over at the suddenness of the shock. But 
she righted herself at once, though her sail had 
dipped low in the water, and held her way un- 
flinchingly. As she heeled over, the sailing-mas- 
ter saw the two, husband and wife, flung against 
the bulwarks ; then he saw two large white arms 
raise themselves aloft in the air ; he heard a sharp, 
shrill scream, and then a heavy splash in the 
water — as both the men sang out that the marchese 
had fallen overboard. 


MISERICORDIA. 


117 


But the marchesa was standing pale, firm, 
erect by the side, looking down on the moon- 
lighted sea. 

Once, and once only, the white face of Salva- 
tore Capozzi came up from among the spuming 
spray ; the dark and dying eyes fixed themselves 
on her — eyes full of reproach, of pleading for 
pity, of the agony of death — and the pale lips 
tried to frame themselves to speak, but no living 
word came from them. The body went down, 
the waves dashed on, and the boat ploughed her 
headlong way over the spot where its owner had 
sunk in the sea. 

In the necessary inquiry which followed this 
terrible accident no testimony could be given im- 
plicating any one. A sudden squall had struck 
the boat, and the marchese, who could not swim, 
had been flung overboard by the shock, his wife 
having saved herself by clinging to the ropes. 
There was no small boat with the yacht, and even 
if there had been it could -not have been used. 
All was done for the recovery of the body that 
was possible ; but it was not possible to do much ; 
and it was to be looked for some time hence, when 
perhaps it would be washed up by the tide among 
the rocks and ruins of Equense. 

The sailing-master knew nothing more than 
this, and gave his evidence with admirable sym- 
pathy and respect. He even went out of his way 
to testify to the pleasant terms on which the two 


118 


MISERICORDIA. 


were together ; and the sailors, who were exam- 
ined too, repeated the same thing. 

The widow, gently interrogated, replied to all 
questions with the self-control to be expected from 
one of her nation ; and if she was white and some- 
what scared, who would not have been, after such 
a catastrophe? Her handsome young husband, 
adored and adoring, snatched from her by such a 
fearful fate ! — no wonder that she was pale and 
pitiful, and in her white veil and wrappings more 
than ever like the Cenci, in her dress of condem- 
nation for crime and of shame for sin. 

However this might be, no blame attached to 
any one. It was a regrettable accident, and that 
closed the whole proceedings. The Neapolitan 
papers put in the notice of the death between two 
broad black lines, indicating mourning ; and the 
parish priest preached the marchese’s funeral ser- 
mon, wherein he compared the dead roue to the 
local saint and the founder of the church. The 
beautiful widow was already the object of count- 
less surmises, and as many hypothetical husbands 
as there were unmarried men in the society of the 
place were given to her to choose from ; and the 
sailing-master became suddenly rich, and bought 
a ‘‘fondo” of his own among the mountains, 
where he made wine and cheese, and thanked his 
saints for the chance which had given him his pros- 
perity. No one knew where he got the money, 
but there it was ; and he was in his right to make 
use of what he had. 


MISERICOKDIA. 


119 


Soon after this the marchesa sold all her prop- 
erty out of hand for what it would fetch. She 
did not preserve a picture, a vase, a hook ; every- 
thing connected with her Italian life was swept 
clean out of her path, and she went away to Eng- 
land, where the jDostmaster was desired to forward 
all her letters — General Post-Office, London. 


VIII. 

By virtue of the English blood in the wife — 
or widow — a notice of the Marchese Capozzi’s 
death, its manner, and the inquiry following, was 
put into the English newspapers, and so came 
down to Marston, where it excited the comments 
and suggestions which belong to the kind of minds 
of which the society there was composed. All 
wondered when Mrs. Thorburn would be brought 
home, and supposed it would not be long — though 
some said, surely, not before the year was out, 
and even then it would be unseemly ! Others 
marveled at the extraordinary aptness of the cir- 
cumstance — one of those miraculous interpositions 
whereby Providence itself seems to work for the 
happiness of certain people ; ' though others, again, 
with a thought of their own daughter of the soil 
who was the first victim, and of the poor marchese 
himself, who was the second — and such a good- 
tempered, charming young man, poor fellow ! — 


120 


MISERICORDIA. 


thought this same Providence uncommonly par- 
tial, and pitied the unhappy creatures for whom 
it evidently had no sympathy. 

Conjecture was more rife than ever when Noel 
Thorburn, a month or two after the announcement, 
suddenly went to London, and gave out that he 
did not mean to return for some time ; and soon 
there was not a doubt as to why he was there, or 
what would happen when he did return. For 
news came down that the marchesa was in town, 
having been met by Frank Hardisty in the Park, 
looking more beautiful but more melancholy than 
ever. The young man wrote all this to fiancee^ 
Millicent Despard, who had not been long in con- 
soling herself for the loss of one lover by the ac- 
ceptance of another. But he did not add how the 
marchesa had invited him into her carriage ; how 
she had spoken to him gravely, seriously, without 
blame, but in words that cut him more deeply than 
the severest blame would have done, on his un- 
worthy action in seeking to find out what she had 
desired should be hidden, resulting, as it did, in 
breaking up her place of safety, and setting her 
husband on her traces ; and how he had felt him- 
self for that half-hour the meanest hound alive, 
having made himself, what any honest Englishman 
would revolt at being called, an amateur detective 
for the harm of an unoffending woman — and all 
for the love of a girl whose pleasure was dearer 
to him than his own honor ! All this he kept to 


MISERICORDIA. 


121 


himself. What shame he suffered on account of 
his amateur detectiveship, he did not choose that 
she should know, nor share in the trouble of his 
self-reproach. This he would always bear alone, 
and she should never know that he had it to bear 
at all ; for he, too, had his chivalry, like Noel ; 
and if not so fine in character, from the point of 
view of strength and intellect, was as pure-hearted 
and as noble-natured. 

And, after all, had not things worked well on 
the whole all round ? Was it not better that Mil- 
licent should have been saved from a man who 
did not love her as she deserved to be loved, to 
be given to one who did, than that she should 
have married Noel Thorburn and repented all her 
life after ? 

And, again, if there really had been anything 
between the so-called widow and Noel, was it not 
better to have her true state discovered before he 
had gone deeper into the wood and been made 
more unhappy than he was already ? And as the 
death of the marchese — poor fellow ! — had nothing 
whatever to do with all these circumstances, on 
the whole Frank Hardisty felt his conscience clear 
— when he was not with the beautiful woman with 
her sad, sweet, Cenci-like face, and the world of 
mute reproach that lay in the depths of her dark 
eyes. Then, as he owned to himself, he felt a 
miserable sham, and would gladly have exchanged 
his personality for that of the first crossing-sweep- 


122 


MISERICORDIA. 


er, if he could. But remorse cannot undo faults, 
and, whether for good or evil, or a barren result 
of neither, Frank Hardisty had acted, and had to 
abide by his own deed. 

And now the end of all her troubles had come, 
and Clarissa stood face to face with her best, her 
highest, her truest happiness. She was engaged 
to be married to Noel when her year of conven- 
tional mourning should be ended, and meanwhile 
they lived near to each other in London, and saw 
each other daily ; and what they saw only strength- 
ened the love which each felt for the other, and 
made the happiness between them deeper and 
sweeter. 

But there was one thing which Noel could not 
help seeing. As time wore on, that melancholy 
which had always been a characteristic with Cla- 
rissa, increased, and in a sense changed. 

Something of her quietism had left her, some- 
thing of her inert spirit of fatalism. She used to 
look at Noel with her large, mournful eyes earnest- 
ly, pleadingly, searchingly, as if she had something 
to tell him which she had not yet found occasion 
— or courage ? — to say ; but it was only in her ex- 
pression ; there was no change in her manner or 
her actions or her words — only in the earnest, sor- 
rowful eyes, which at times almost moved him to 
tears, and which, when he had left her, haunted 
him with a kind of dread that he could neither 
explain nor conquer. They were eyes full of 


MISERICORDIA. 


123 


meaning, as of a soul laden with thoughts that 
wanted words ; hut how to get from her those 
words ? — how to interpret that mute yet so pas- 
sionate desire ? 

Was it love for him — love as infinite, as ten- 
der, as pure as his own ? Sometimes he thought 
so ; and when he did, his passion of joy went al- 
most beyond his power to bear ; but again he 
thought that it was something else than love — 
something that was more sorrowful and less sure, 
more plaintive, though as intense. 

One day a tremendous tragedy broke on the 
world through the papers. It was the death, by 
drowning, of a man of some note, if of less than 
desirable fame. He had been sailing in a small 
boat with a woman who had cause of grief against 
him, when he fell (?) into the water and was 
drowned. Some boats were near, and the evi- 
dence was conflicting : one side saying that the 
woman pushed him in ; the other, that he fell by 
accident, and that she was not standing near 
enough to have touched him. 

The question before the public, as before the 
coroner, was : By chance, or design ? — accident, or 
murder ? The verdict went to the side of the flrst 
two of the four alternatives, and the woman es- 
caped with only a cloud of probability and sus- 
picion about her name. 

All this was in the newspapers, where it was 
discussed and hammered at after the manner of 


124 


MISERICORDIA. 


editors at a loss for copy ; and, naturally enough, 
the widow and her lover took up the theme when 
Noel went to see her, as of usual daily habit. 

They took different sides on the matter : he 
believed that it had been a pure accident, but she 
shook her head, and said, ‘‘ No, it was by design ; ” 
and then she added, dreamily, ‘‘It was her fate.” 

“ My love ! we do not commit murder by fate ! ” 
cried Noel, with half a smile and half a sigh. 

This indolent doctrine, cutting as it did against 
the braver and bolder creed of moral responsibility, 
hurt him in the woman whom he loved and hoped 
to make his wife. It was part of that fatal Nea- 
politan influence which he wished to root out of 
her, if it were but possible — which he had to a 
great extent, but remnants of which yet lingered 
— and this was one of the most obstinate. 

“Do you think not? I do,” she answered, 
quietly. Then, looking down on her hands, ex- 
amining the pretty pink filbert nails critically, she 
asked, in her soft, indifferent voice : “ What 
would you say, Noel, to a woman who, for love of 
you, had done such a thing ? ” 

“ It is impossible for me to say anything,” he 
answered, smiling. “I do not think that the 
woman I love could be a murderess. You might 
as well suppose that I could love a wild beast or 
a savage ! ” 

“It might be,” she answered, tranquilly, the 
faintest little quiver about her lips. “ A woman 


MISERICORDIA. 


125 


might do such a thing in certain circumstances, 
and yet not be wholly bad.” 

Fate again ? ” he laughed, pleasantly. 

‘^Fate,” she answered, seriously, lifting her 
eyes, with almost a rebuke in their soft earnest- 
ness. 

“As I love only you, and you have not com- 
mitted murder, we cannot very well discuss the 
question,” he said, with a lover’s fondness, a lover’s 
flattery. 

“ No, no ; but suppose this poor creature had, 
for love of some one else ? ” she urged. 

“He would be the most miserable man on 
earth,” he answered, gravely ; “ and her love 
would not excuse her crime.” 

“ You think not ? ” 

“ Surely ! Can there be a doubt ? ” 

“ And you would condemn her ? — past forgive- 
ness ? ” 

The fair face turned a little pale as she said 
this, and the beautiful mouth held itself apart, as 
if it were diflicult to breathe quite freely. 

“ God and her own soul would do that,” he 
answered ; “ my poor condemnation would count 
for nothing before those two tremendous tribunals.” 

“ And you would not love her ? ” 

“ A murderess ! — how could any man ? I ? 
No. But I, as I love no one but you, and never 
loved any one as I love you, am not to be spoken 
of as possible. Still, I cannot imagine any honest 


126 


MISERICORDIA. 


man loving a woman who had proved herself 
capable of such a crime.” 

Beatrice Cenci ? ” she asked. 

Ah ! she is like one of the old Greek trage- 
dies — ^her fate so horrible, her crime so terrible ! 
Thinking of her, one can almost forgive her, be- 
cause of that favorite doctrine of yours — because 
of fate.” 

“ If with her, then with others,” said the widow, 
with a sudden flush. Humanity is the same now 
as it was then ; and we women suflter in the same 
way, and revenge ourselves in the same way ! ” 

He smiled, and drew his chair still nearer to 
hers, taking her hands in his, and looking tenderly 
into her face. 

‘‘No, no!” he said; “it is too dangerous a 
doctrine to advocate. We must come down to 
the plain prose of every-day life, wherein we all 
feel morally responsible for our actions, and that 
we can, if we will, conquer temptation and refrain 
from evil. It is all a matter of will ; and you will 
to be good — do you not, beloved and best ? Or 
are you sweet and good by nature and without 
willing ? ” kissing her hands. 

“ If I were wicked, would you condemn me ? ” 
she asked, passing her hand over his forehead. 

“You could not be wicked. Do not desecrate 
your image with such an association ! ” he an- 
swered. 

“No, no ; tell me : if I were, would you con- 


MISERICORDIA. 


127 


demn me ? ” she reiterated, her hand still on his 
forehead, bending back his head a little by her 
pressure, and looking down into his eyes. 

Dear, right is right, and wrong wrong, who- 
ever 4oes either,” he said. 

And I should be as wrong as any other ? ” 
Why do you talk such nonsense ? ” he said, 
trying to be playful, but troubled in spite of him- 
self. 

“ Tell me — never mind whether it is nonsense 
or not — should I be as wrong as any one else ? ” 

She spoke earnestly, passionately, with a kind 
of insistance that would not be denied. 

“ Dear love, why do you torture me, and de- 
grade yourself, by such questions?” said Noel, 
with infinite tenderness ; but his love, great as it 
was, could not make him belie his conscience and 
his sense of truth. Surely, if you committed a 
sin, it would be sin all the same, and you would 
be as blameworthy as another,” he added, with 
infinite tenderness, but steadily. 

She said no more, but, of her own free will, 
put her arms round his neck and drew his head 
to her heart. It was the first time that she had 
ever proffered him a caress, and the passion and 
fever of her action took him by surprise, and 
caused him half ecstasy, half pain. It was some- 
thing so unlike herself ! Exquisite as it was to 
him on the one side, it was more disturbing than 
soothing on the other. 


128 


MISERICORDIA. 


But no more was said on the subject of that 
woman’s guilt or innocence ; and the evening 
passed as usual, in a very heaven of happiness for 
the one ; if the other harbored thoughts that vere 
not quite in harmony with that trustful and-serene 
delight. 

When the time for parting came, it was impos- 
sible not to see that the widow was more moved, 
more tender and effusive than in general. She did 
not cry, nor cling to his arm, as Millicent might 
have done ; but she left her hand in his a little 
longer than usual, and made a thousand pretty ex- 
cuses, a thousand tender obstacles, why he should 
not go that very moment. But these came to an 
end, like all the rest ; and Noel bade her the last 
good-night, for the last time kissed her hand, and 
then her face, and so passed from her sight ; his 
last words, At three, to-morrow ? Love me as 
I love you till then ! ” 

And when he had really gone, and she heard 
the hall-door shut, she stole up-stairs to her own 
room, and, locking the door against the outer world, 
as if banishing all forever, knelt down by the side 
of her bed, and prayed. 

The next day, somewhere about noon, Noel re- 
ceived a note from the marchesa, asking him not 
to call on her for the next two days. She had some 
business on hand, she said, which she would explain 
to him afterward ; but she was sure that he would 
respect her wishes — which were not her pleasures 


MISERICORDIA. 


129 


— and not come to her house till the time she had 
indicated : two days hence. It was not a long note, 
but it was one full of the most intense sadness, if 
also of a tenderness as intense. Noel felt almost 
as he had done when he had received that farewell 
letter of hers at Marston ; but he took himself to 
task for superstition, and consoled himself by writ- 
ing to her several pages of love, of which the bur- 
den was his inextinguishable passion and unfath- 
omable adoration ; and then he set himself to live 
through the days in the best way he could, never 
having known in his life before how long and heavy 
time could be. 

On the third day he called, wondering greatly 
that he had not heard from her meanwhile ; but 
when he asked for her, the servant, looking scared 
and terrified, told him that she had left town two 
days ago, and had not given them her address. 
These were for him, he added — putting into Noel’s 
hand a small paper parcel ; the lady left them, with 
her compliments, when he should call. 

He opened the paper with hands that trembled 
in spite of himself. It contained only a locket 
which she used to wear, and which he had given 
her. In the inside was her photograph and a lock 
of her hair ; on the outside, her monogram en- 
twined with his, and on the other side had been 
engraved one word only — 


Ilisericordia ! 


130 


MISERICORDIA. 


— with two dates : one the date of three days, the 
other of some eight months ago, when the mar- 
chese had been drowned. 

He never saw her, never heard of her again. 
Every inquiry which he made failed to discover 
her — failed to find a trace of her anywhere. For 
how could he track her to that nunnery in Naples, 
where she lived that she might always hear the 
murmur of the waves beneath which her husband 
was lying dead ? — that she might never be able to 
forget, as her penance, the white and dying face 
that came up once from the waves and looked at her 
with such unutterable entreaty and reproach — that 
she might be surrounded by the old associations 
of her misery and her crime, and so be made to 
feel herself the castaway her lover would have 
thought her, if to God only, by her penitence and 
the grace that is never denied, she was still possi- 
ble for redemption. He could not trace what no 
man had seen pass — what was hidden from all. 
The Sister Misericordia who lived in that melan- 
choly home of fastings, prayer, and penance, was 
noted only for her sweetness, her humility, the 
severity of her discipline, her piety ; but no one 
knew her real name, nor suspected of what she 
had been guilty, save the priest who confessed 
her when she first came in, and absolved her the 
hour before she died. 


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